


God's in Good Standing

by DayDaDahlias



Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Depressing, Doctors & Physicians, Drinking, F/M, Fear of Death, Fear of Discovery, HIV/AIDS, HIV/AIDS Crisis, Homophobic Language, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, No Smut, POV Spencer Smith, POV Third Person, Period-Typical Homophobia, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sickness, Writing during quarantine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:41:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23181133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DayDaDahlias/pseuds/DayDaDahlias
Summary: 1982 - 1983G.R.I.D (Gay-related immune deficiency), also known as AIDS, is a disease that Dr. Spencer Smith knows all too well.
Relationships: Brendon Urie/past male characters (mentioned), Cassie Vandenboom/Jon Walker, Josh Dun/Dallon Weekes, Linda Ignarro/Spencer Smith, Ryan Ross & Spencer Smith & Brendon Urie, Ryan Ross/Brendon Urie, Spencer Smith & Dallon Weekes, Spencer Smith & Jon Walker
Comments: 14
Kudos: 22





	God's in Good Standing

**Author's Note:**

> I own none of these people. Only the writing and mistakes are mine. 
> 
> With all this corona stuff going on... inspiration struck. Plus, there are no AIDS fics in this fandom which is really a sin. 
> 
> All medical information I used in this fic is taken from google and hospital shows and AIDs plays ( _The Normal Heart_ ). I have no actual eductaion on these subjects. Also, if you don't like character death and just... I mean, to be honest, it's just 22000 words of depression so... if that's not for you, go read some happy fluff instead! There's great stuff out there!

There is no God in the hospital. 

Spencer Smith resigned himself to that fact a long time ago. 

Originally, when he was just starting out at the hospital—barely even a man then; a child—he thought there was a God somewhere, perhaps tucked away in the musty yellow walls of the building. 

But it soon became obvious that wasn’t the case. 

Even after searching high and low, through surgery after surgery after surgery, standing outside the O.R., pinching the bridge of his nose with his head hung and hair in his eyes, _praying_ for a good outcome… God didn’t come through. 

Good men died. Consistently, constantly, good men went into surgery and didn’t come out. Good men died. And no matter how much Spencer Smith prayed, he couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t save them. So, he came to the only conclusion; there was no God in the hospital. What an idiot he’d been for thinking such. 

Now listen, Spencer Smith believes in God. He’s a God-fearing man for sure. Goes to church every other Sunday, prays before dinner when he remembers, and listens to Christian radio when he feels so inclined. He believes in God. 

But not in the hospital. 

The fact became simple to him—an excuse for this death of good men to make sense—that God just wasn’t _allowed_ in his hospital. The Lord was allowed outside. He was free to wander as he pleased; to smile at the lazy passerby. Give them a confident thumbs up. 

_Nope, you’re not dead yet_ , the gesture would say, _good luck with that._

But not in Spencer Smith’s hospital. In the hospital, God isn’t able to swing by and say hello nor can he flash an award-winning smile. At Spencer’s hospital, God stands outside the window, peering inside at him, smiles wide, and flips Spencer the bird. 

So, Spencer decided that God isn’t allowed in his hospital. Nope. No God. And Spencer Smith is the one to thank. God’s a fucking prick anyway. Who needs God?

There is an obligatory church inside the hospital—not really a church, more a room masquerading as a church to provide comfort—that family members can go to and pray at. They sit in the pews and bow their heads and beg. Beg and beg to a man that isn’t listening. 

Sometimes, Spencer almost walks over to them and says, ‘ma’am. You’re an idiot. Stop praying. Get up off your knees. There’s no God here, ma’am. Not in my hospital.’

But he usually manages to refrain. It’s hard. But he does it. 

Spencer Smith understands that praying is a comfort. So even though it does nothing but make weak men and weak women weaker, Spencer lets family beg. 

Lying has a calming effect. 

Spencer Smith is a liar. By all means, he is. He looks family members in the eyes and says, ‘don’t worry. Don’t you worry, your son will be fine.’ Even though the son never is. 

But lying? Lying is a comfort. 

It seems to Spencer that family knows it too. Spencer’s met a lot of good liars throughout his time at the hospital. Had mothers and fathers telling babies they were going to live through the night; had children telling their parents that a tumor really wasn’t so scary after all. 

That’s always the lie. That everything is going to be alright. 

Everyone in the hospital lies. Spencer’s never met a person that doesn’t. He has a favorite though, liar. Although, perhaps liar isn’t the best word. Fibber. 

Jon Walker is an exceptionally talented _fibber_. Because Jon is a firm believer in ‘every lie comes with a grain of truth,’ which means that Jon doesn’t lie necessarily, he fibs. Skirts the truth. 

Spencer admires the talent. 

The way that Jon can smile at a family, bat his eyelashes and make his dark eyes easy to listen to and say that there wasn’t anymore they could do. Which isn’t a lie, not really. Although, if he was telling the flat-out truth, he would say, ‘nothing more we _want_ to do.’

The hospital has limited resources after all. Favorites get picked. 

“You’re doing it again, by the way.”

Spencer snaps his head up at the voice. Jon Walker, the fibber—the object of Spencer’s turning thoughts—is smiling at him leeringly, one eyebrow neatly cocked, his head tilted to the side so that his hair parts unevenly. His eyes are doing that thing they do; the thing Spencer hates. The ‘Listening-Look.’ A particular look that Jon sports far more than necessary. 

Spencer shifts his shoulders, trying to shrug off that stare. The way that Jon’s eyes hold him. He directs his own glazed eyes to his fingers playing absently with the cuff of his white coat. 

Jon watches him, smiling in that ‘listening’ way he does. He sings out, “still doing it, Spence. God, can you stop, please? It’s so loud, man.”

Spencer blinks in alarm. He asks, perturbed, “what the hell am I doing that can be considered as _loud_?”

Jon rolls his eyes around in his head like they’re dancing, straightening himself to stand taller as he says, “your thinking, buddy; it’s booming. Thunderous, even, your thoughts. Room-rocking. The entire building can hear it. Keep it down, for Christ’s sake.”

Spencer reels back, sending a hurried glance around the hallway, just in case his mind really is on speaker. No one turns his way and he releases a sigh of relief. If people could hear his thoughts… For one thing, Christians would be pissed. Spencer Smith—a mere mortal—banning the likes of God from the hospital? He might be burned at the stake. 

“Alright then.” Spencer sniffs. “If it’s so loud, what am I thinking here, Jon?”

“Dr. Walker to you sir,” Jon replies, holding his chin high. 

“Oh, shove off,” Spencer snaps and Jon laughs jovially like he has heard anything worth a laugh. “C’mon, what’s the plan for today? Please tell me I don’t have to watch a baby die. I’m so tired of watching babies die.”

Jon chuckles, shaking his head, as he walks away from the nurses’ station, bobbing his head for Spencer to follow him. Instantly, Spencer does. 

“This is why you could never work in Peds,” Jon says as they travel the length of the corridor. “Can’t even handle a few dead babies. You’re pathetic.”

“Or gynecology,” Spencer adds. He shivers. “So many dead babies.”

“Well, that doesn’t have to do with babies,” Jon responds, “that has to do with your fear of vaginas.”

Spencer argues, “which is a fear I _don’t_ have.” 

Spencer pushes Jon in the shoulder and Jon saunters to the side to avoid it, once again falling into giggles. Jon is too happy a person to be in this line of work. He will work in Peds definitely. Dr. Walker can handle dead babies. Once it gets time to declare their services, Jon is absolutely going after a Peds fellowship, Spencer knows it. 

And Spencer? Spencer has no early idea what he is going to do when it comes time to choose. Maybe general. Probably general. He doesn’t know. He has two years to figure it out, anyway. No rush. 

“Speaking of vaginas,” Jon hums, “how’s yours?”

Spencer looks at him, and it’s a warning. His girlfriend is not a vagina. His girlfriend is a person who happens to have a vagina. The next time Jon messes the two up, Spencer swears he’s going to deck him. 

“Fine, fine, sorry.” Jon raises his arms in surrender and sways back to walk alongside Spencer but always a foot ahead. He is the one leading after all. “Lins? How is she?”

“Linda’s good,” Spencer says. 

And, for the record, Linda is good. Great, even. The best part of Spencer’s life, no question. He hates God and dead babies and Jon’s Listening-Look so it’s nice going home every night to someone he loves. Although, lately, he doubts that Linda feels the same. As many times as she rolls to the other side of the bed. As many times as she doesn’t look up when he walks through the door and says, ‘you’re late; you’re always late’ to him. Linda is good. Linda is great. 

Spencer isn’t. 

“Well, that’s nice to hear,” Jon replies. He has tucked his hands into his coat. He’s smiling. He hits Spencer’s arm with his elbow, lowering his voice. “Picked out a ring yet?”

Spencer deflates significantly, his shoulders sagging in and his eyelids drooping. The ring. The proposal. The perfect marriage he was going to set up for Linda… that was never going to happen. 

“Uh…” He sighs and rubs the back of his neck. “I haven’t bought one yet.”

“What?” Jon’s jaw drops. “Buddy! You’ve been dating this girl how many years?”

“Six.”

“Six fucking years!” Jon cries. “And you haven’t popped the question? I bet the girl’s losing her mind.”

Spencer tries to smile. “Believe me, she is.”

“Here,” Jon offers and slings his arm around Spencer’s shoulder. “This weekend, we both got Sunday off right? Let’s go ring shopping. I’ll help you out. Show you what I got for Cassie. They say you’re supposed to spend two paychecks on the ring or something. It’ll be fun! Bonding experience!”

“Right.” Spencer smiles at him. It isn’t fake but there’s tension to it. “Ring shopping with my best friend, I can’t wait.”

Jon claps him on the back. “That’s what I want to hear!”

“I was kidding,” Spencer mutters under his breath but Jon doesn’t catch it. “Alright, I’ll bite, where the hell are you taking me?” 

“Room 221,” Jon answers. His strides are long.

“What’s in 221?” 

“A patient,” Jon croons. 

“Okay, duh.” Spencer rolls his eyes. “What kind of patient?”

Jon waves a hand to paint a picture. “The kind that needs medical attention.”

“I’m going to hurt you.”

Jon grins. “We’ll see.”

* * *

Room 221 has a window view. Not all rooms do so Spencer considers the inhabitants of 221 very lucky people. Not all people are lucky after all. He hopes they know how great their window view is. Maybe he should tell them.

Jon and he enter the room, Jon’s hands still fixed in his pockets and that Listening smile squarely in place. Like it’s painted on. Spencer does his best to mimic it. Jon’s attitude puts patients at ease. Some asks for him specifically. Spencer could learn to use a page from his book.

The room is about the same size as Spencer’s own bedroom and he thinks that really, he should just sell his house and live in the hospital. The beds are as comfortable. Not to mention that Linda can’t yell at him if he sleeps at the hospital. 

The bed in 221 is in the center of the room, a few feet from the window. The covers are made and the bed is empty. 

The chair, however, that is pulled up to the window is not. Spencer is grateful that someone is enjoying the view. Saved him the hassle of telling them to. 

The figure sitting in the chair is dressed in a hospital gown but—apparently not pleased with the garment—has a leather jacket wrapped around his shoulders. It’s either too small or too large; Spencer can’t exactly tell but he knows that it doesn’t belong to the man in the chair. 

He isn’t facing Spencer and Jon so all they see is the leather jacket, the bare feet on the linoleum floor, the hospital down that reaches his knees, and the mess of black hair that curls around ears and the back of his neck. 

Jon clears his throat. “Mr. Urie.”

Instantly, the figure straightens, turning to look over his shoulder. His face splits into a smile—rather dashing, actually, how excited he looks at having visitors. His features are large. His smile, the lips that surround it, his wider nose, and his rounded black eyes. He looks excruciatingly young. 

Spencer hopes he doesn’t have cancer. 

“Gentlemen!” Urie sings—and Spencer is surprised by the pitch—as he scoots his chair in a screeching circle to face them. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“The hospital and your life insurance,” Jon returns, and his smile is changing to a more genuine one. “That’s who.”

“Ah.” Urie leans back in his chair, resting his arms in his lap, folding his fingers together. As if it’s a formal meeting of some kind. “I see. Be sure to give them my best. My life does mean so much to me.”

Spencer watches Urie carefully. The way he keeps his hands close to the right part of his abdomen, as if protecting it. Spencer tries not to let his excitement show too plainly in his features. He knows what this. He knows what he wants this to be. 

“Dr. Walker?” Spencer asks, directing his attention to Jon beside him. “Care to let Mr. Urie know the plan?”

‘Mr. Urie’ could have easily been filled in with ‘me.’ _Care to let_ me _know the plan? Asshole. You better have one._ But Spencer tries not to make a scene too often. 

“Well, before that—” Urie interrupts before Jon can so much as open his mouth. “Can we address something, just very fast? Only take a moment.”

Jon and Spencer allow him to speak.

Urie smiles oddly as he points a finger at Spencer. “Who’s this guy?”

Jon snorts. “Uh, sorry there, Mr. Urie. This here’s Dr. Spencer Smith, a colleague. He’ll be a consulting doctor on your case.”

“Oh?” Urie practically purrs. “Another doctor? Just for me? I feel so special.”

“I wouldn’t,” Spencer says before Jon can laugh. “All patients get a team. Important to have a second opinion. You’re the same as any case.”

Urie directs all attention to Spencer. His smile is wide. Very, very wide. “And he’s a dick? Oh, Dr. Walker, you shouldn’t have! Say, Dr. Dick, what crawled up your ass and blocked the sunshine?”

Spencer blinks, jerking his head to the side to look at Jon who can’t seem to stop snickering. Spencer blubbers for a second, trying to find the proper words. 

“S-Smith,” he manages, “it’s Dr. _Smith_.”

Urie pouts. “But Dr. Dick has such a ring.”

“He’s right,” Jon agrees. “A very nice ring. And it fits!”

Spencer snarls at him and Jon’s grin is devilish. 

“While we’re on names,” Urie starts up again—Spencer assumes he isn’t the kind to sit quiet. “Mr. Urie is far too professional a tag for me. This is my day off, guys, please. It’s Brendon.”

“Hell of a way to spend your holiday,” Jon says and it’s meant as a joke so of course ‘Brendon’ cackles. Jon is hilarious, apparently. Spencer thinks he’s decently funny, but patients seem to get more than a kick out of him. 

It’s got to be the eyes. Spencer blames it on the eyes. Listening.

“Well y’know.” Brendon shrugs. “The appendix comes a’knocking; you gotta answer the door, dontcha?”

“That you do,” Jon says, “which is a wonderful segway to our next course of action. We’re gonna get you into surgery by this afternoon for your appendectomy, Mr—”

“Brendon,” the young man corrects. 

“Right.” Jon takes it into account. Pretends his brain wheels are turning. “ _Brendon_. And we’re gonna make a small incision, go in, pull out that nasty little appendix that’s been causing you so much grief here lately, and you’ll be good as new in a few weeks.”

“Good as new?” Brendon repeats. 

“Better,” Jon declares which entices Brendon. “Won’t miss it in the least. You won’t even know it’s gone.”

“Great!” Brendon cheers. “I’m sure the scar will be a serious turn on too.”

"Ladies love it.” Jon smirks.

Spencer breaths relief, hoping that means they’re done here, and they can go on to other cases. Other cases where the patients are asleep or in a coma and he doesn’t have to listen to them be charming and watch Jon’s Listening smile widen. God, anything but that.

“But hey, can I ask—?”

Spencer never gets what he wants.

Brendon asks, sounding oh so sweet and curious, “can you hang around a minute and say all that again to my brother?” 

Brendon’s smile turns somewhat sheepish and Spencer narrows his eyes on it, scrutinizing. 

“He’s been pretty freaked about all of it—” Brendon rubs at his wrist with his fingers— “More so than me, if I’m honest. So if you could just say that exactly—the same exact way—how you did to me to him, I’d really appreciate it. Be much obliged.”

“No, sorry we have other cases,” Spencer says at the same time Jon replies, “of course we can, no hassle.”

They share a look. 

Spencer thinks of all the ways he can get away with murder.

* * *

It takes fifteen minutes for Brendon’s brother to arrive. In that time period, Spencer successfully concocts seven full-proof ways to kill Jon without leaving any evidence. Jon doesn’t seem to mind the way he’s glaring at him across the room though. Doesn’t even notice. He and Brendon can’t stop bickering away to one another about this and that.

Spencer isn’t really listening to their conversation. He tried to for a minute but he got bored fast. It is mostly Jon explaining to Brendon what an appy consists of and then Brendon begging to take the organ home in a jar when they finish. Jon laughs every time. 

The same joke has been told three consecutive times—Jon laughing the same way each time Brendon says, ‘oh pretty please’—when a man cracks the door from the outside just enough to slip into the room how a snake slips into a rabbit hole. 

Spencer gets the feeling that the intruder didn’t want to be seen entering and instantly suspicion sets in. He stands abruptly and says, “the brother, then?”

Jon—who was sitting on the bed Brendon was lying on—quickly jerks his head to see the newcomer and stands in tandem, brushing off his pants. 

“Sir!” he says as if he is legitimately happy to see the brother. 

Spencer is legitimately grateful. 

“Oh, uh, hi.” Brendon’s brother holds onto the door handle in a fist and sends a look over his shoulder. He buzzes with concern. “Am I—? Am I interrupting something? I can come back later if—”

“No, no,” Brendon insists, waving a hand at the man who looks like a boy. They both look like boys in honesty though, probably only just over twenty. Brendon is smiling big merely at the presence of his seemingly better half. “Come in, Ryan, c’mon.”

Reluctantly, ‘Ryan’ listens—and there is a glance he gives Brendon, as if to ask, ‘can I trust them?’ and Spencer wants to laugh because _really_? He’s a fucking doctor. He is designed to be trusted. 

Ryan further enters the room, the door slowly shutting behind him and, like a scared kitten, he flinches when it shuts. 

He goes to Jon first because Jon is closer and shakes his hand. 

“Ross,” he says unevenly, eyes fidgeting between Spencer and Jon. “My name’s Ryan Ross. If you need to know or…”

He trails off as though it isn’t important anymore.

He shakes hands with Spencer next. He avoids eye contact and his palm is sweating. Spencer doesn’t remove his glare for a second. He asks, “different last names? Interesting.”

Jon glowers at him which insinuates that he’s asking too much. Spencer doesn’t care so much however. He hasn’t slept in thirty-five hours. He’s allowed to ask questions. 

Ryan ducks his head as if he is made nervous by the inquiry, which certainly doesn’t make Spencer feel any better, but before he can properly answer Brendon is saying, “oh we aren’t like _brother_ brothers.”

Spencer raises a brow and asks, “is there any other kind?”

“We’re stepbrothers,” Ryan replies, prying his eyes from the floor. 

They are wide copper-colored eyes and when Spencer catches them, Ryan darts them to the side. Spencer’s own baby blues narrow. Something doesn’t seem right to him. 

“Oh.” Spencer nods. “Alright.”

Ryan spares a glance between Jon and Spencer, moving to tuck both hands into his back pockets and slouch his shoulders up. He is wearing old jeans. There’s a dirt stain one cuff and a whole in the other leg’s knee. “So uhm… I mean is there anything you need from us or can we—”

“My apologies, Mr. Ross,” Jon starts to say but Ryan shakes his head, correcting in a low voice, “S’Ryan… Ryan’s fine. Friends say Ryan.”

“Right.” Jon presses his lips to a line. He doesn’t like he being corrected twice in one hour. “Ryan then. Brendon here wanted us to run through his procedure with you. Hear you’re the worrying kind.”

Ryan goes a bit red in the face, as though he didn’t want that fact shared, but he says, “right, yes sir. Please.”

And so Jon goes through it, the whole while maintaining that excruciatingly kind façade and the entire time Spencer has to try his very hardest not to roll his eyes. 

How can he do that? Jon? Be so kind to the patients. Idiots, the whole lot of them. Delusional. How can Jon feed into those babblings?

And then somehow, even after all that coddling, not care when they die? 

Not that Brendon _will_ die. It’s a standard procedure, and Jon is a more than capable resident, it’ll be easy enough and Brendon will live to be annoyingly happy another day. 

That being said, Spencer is more than pleased to be on the case. He needs a good outcome. God, that’s all he needs. A good fucking outcome. 

By the time Jon has shut his mouth, Ryan is nodding as though any of the words made any sense to him, his arms wrapped tightly around his middle—the kid is incredibly thin, almost worryingly so, and Spencer watches the way he sways in stale air with interest. 

Ryan is looking at Jon as if he hung the stars—as if anyone willing to help Brendon is a man just below God—and he says, practically breathless, “thank you. Thank you very much for—”

“Oh, no thanks necessary!” Jon says like the good Samaritan he is. “It’s my job. I’ll get your boy here fixed up by this weekend. Two to four weeks from then, depending on complications, and he’s back to normal, spick and span.”

Spencer actively rolls his eyes. He hates how happy Jon is. 

Ryan grins, all wide and hopeful and _goddamn_ is he young. Those wet copper eyes that glisten like pennies dropped in puddles. He clings to the sleeves of his striped cardigan that cling to his arms making him look far too skinny. 

Spencer could flick him and he’d topple.

Even though he was told not to, Ryan repeats, “thank you very much.”

Jon accepts it.

* * *

When Jon and Spencer exit the room, Jon carefully pulling the door closed behind him, Spencer sends him a darting look.

“Something’s up,” he hisses to his side and Jon gives him an odd expression, as if he doesn’t know. Spencer scoffs. “Don’t tell me you think nothing’s up.”

Jon is pleased. “I think nothing’s up.”

Spencer sighs dramatically, throwing his arms up as they begin to wander down the hall. He shakes his head, saying, mostly to himself, “there’s something up there—with those two—I’m telling you. Something fishy.”

Jon directs his eyes to the ceiling. His smile has lost its charm. “You always say that. C’mon Spence, I got you this case to be happy. _Be_ happy. Why is that so hard for you?”

Because happiness is not yet a part of the human condition that Spencer Smith has yet been able to grasp, that’s why. 

“I’m just telling you—” Spencer wipes his nose with the back of his hand— “There’s something going on there. With those boys. Something’s not right; I feel it.”

“Sure there’s something wrong,” Jon agrees, “one of them has an appendix that needs removing, and I’m the man for the job. That’s something alright. A medical emergency. S’why he’s in a damn hospital, isn’t it?”

“Piss off,” Spencer says and Jon laughs. 

“Stop being so serious.” Jon’s smile is once again back to its annoyingly charming itself and Spencer scowls to balance it out. “This’ll be the easiest case you do all month, Dr. Smith. Smile. This one’s cut and dry, baby.”

And Spencer flinches when he says that—when he wills it into the universe—because now he knows… He _knows_ it won’t be. 

God is never on his side, after all.

* * *

Spencer returns to room 221 a few hours later the same day, only when necessary, because Brendon needs to be prepped for surgery and Jon laid some shit out about having other patients to see.

Spencer knew he really wanted to get a nap in before surgery. 

He wasn’t an attending yet, Jon, but he had done his fair share of solo surgeries. He was somewhat of a talent around the hospital. Spencer wouldn’t say that he resented Jon for it—he didn’t—but it didn’t make him very happy. 

Jon and he had been in the same intern class and yet, he was always one step ahead. Never mind that though, Spencer tells himself, he needs to practice being happy and tooling on Jon isn’t going to be any help.

He opens the door to 221 just a crack and he almost enters fully but something stops him. The voices inside the room, lowered into murmurs, and he freezes entirely in place, straining his ears to catch the few words. 

People don’t talk like that normally. A secret’s being told.

“You’re an idiot,” Brendon’s voice is saying and there’s laughter to it. He sounds pleased as punch. Like he couldn’t be living a better life. 

“I’m just saying!” Ryan’s hiss doesn’t sound humorous.

“We use the money we’ve saved up,” Brendon explains to him, “we pay in cash—"

“No one pays for thousand-dollar surgeries in cash,” Ryan retaliates, and Spencer is further intrigued and he holds the door firmly in his grip to keep it from squeaking so he can eavesdrop. “They’re gonna ask for your life insurance, B.”

“And I’m gonna say I don’t have any.” Brendon huffs. “I’ve got it under control, _Ry_. We’ve saved for a while and—” 

“What if they ask for _my_ I.D.?” Ryan laments and his voice is still lowered but Spencer can make out clearly how distressed he sounds from across the room.

Brendon tries to reason, “they’re not going to ask for your I.D., Ryan.”

“But what if they do!” Ryan begs. “There’s no fucking proof that we’re brothers!”

Brendon’s voice twists. “There’s no fucking proof that we’re _not_. Don’t overthink this.”

Spencer stiffens. This sounds like a scam. What’s going on in there? Insurance fraud? It might be insurance fraud. It could be anything. What if they were criminals on the lamb and using fake names? What if they were murderers?

“I’m worried,” Ryan grunts. He doesn’t sound worried, he sounds scared. 

Brendon sounds sweet, maternal even, “I know you are.”

“I’m allowed to be worried.” Ryan sounds like he’s protesting.

“Sure you are,” Brendon says and Spencer can hear his smile through the tilted phrase. 

“You worry me.” Ryan lets out a sigh. 

There is a shuffle of some sort inside the room and Spencer scrunches his nose up in confusion, straining his ears to hear. Something of covers shifting and a soft… That’s an odd sound. Spencer’s eyes go wide with the realization. But he has to check before he goes accusing. 

He moves to peak through the crack of the door and—sure enough. 

Brendon is sitting in the bed, hospital gown and all, the covers at his waist, hands in his lap, black hair messy. His smile make’s his teeth gleam white and his cheeks rise making his eyes squint. 

Sitting on the edge of the bed, tucked neatly beside him is Ryan, one of his own hands sitting on one of Brendon’s in his lap, holding onto it in a way no brother should be holding a hand. His head is bent to press into the crook of Brendon’s neck, nose pressed to the skin beneath Brendon’s ear, and Brendon puts his mouth to Ryan’s hair to kiss it. 

How do you describe the sound of a kiss?

Spencer watches Brendon smile into Ryan’s copper hair and laugh. 

“You _love_ me,” he sings, high-pitched and giggling, and Ryan snorts. 

Spencer watches through the crack in the door the way Ryan grins into Brendon’s neck at the phrase though. He doesn’t say it in words, but Spencer can read his lips, the way they form a smile. That’s love alright. 

So they’re homosexuals then. That’s what’s fishy about them. 

Spencer retreats from his hiding spot and glances around the hall. No one saw him snooping. Good news. He takes a soft breath. They’re gay. 

He _knew_ something was up. 

Jon’s gonna have a hay day with this one. 

Gays in his hospital. No wonder God left. 

He knocks on the door to let them know he is coming in and instantly he hears the scramble inside and a hushed, “shit, shit, get off. Get off me.”

He gives them about ten seconds before he walks in, head high. 

Ryan has somehow managed to get himself to the seat next to the window and is standing next to it, stiff as a statue, clasping the head of the chair in a white-knuckled grip. His eyes are flashing anywhere but Spencer and, at some point, he directs them to the ceiling and refuses to move them. 

Not suspicious at all. 

Brendon is still sitting in the hospital bed and he smiles at Spencer easily. The man looks like he has nothing to hide. Not a thing in the world; Brendon Urie is an open book. Spencer grimaces in response. He knows some pages are stuck together. 

“Dr. Dick!” Brendon cheers and Ryan sends him a scandalized glance, chastising, “ _Brendon_!”

Spencer ignores both. He says, clean and easy, “Mr. Urie, it’s time to prep you for surgery.”

Ryan’s face drains. Brendon’s smile twitches. 

“Oh.” Brendon nods in understanding. “Right… yeah. All good. Can uh… Can Ryan come too or—”

“No, sorry,” Spencer says before he even thinks about it. 

Ryan’s eyes widen a smidge and he steps forward, protesting, “but I’m family.” 

Spencer doesn’t say, _no you’re not_ ; he merely flattens his lips to a half simper, tilts his head and lies, “I’m sorry. This is as far as you’re allowed to go. If you could go to the waiting room, we’ll give you all updates as they come.”

Ryan blinks at him, thunder-struck it seems, but it is as if he knows better than to fight. As if fighting isn’t an option anymore and he sends a fleeting look to Brendon. 

Brendon smiles that smile at him and Spencer can see straight through his black eyes. Can read the words they mean so clear. 

“Don’t worry about me, huh?” Brendon asks. His hands shift in his lap as if they aren’t comfortable alone. “Go get some coffee or something. Treat yourself to a few hours without me. The silence will be breathtaking!”

“Right…” Ryan tears his eyes away and lands them on Spencer. The man doesn’t seem content with silence. “Right, okay. I’ll just go then if—”

Spencer moves so he can exit reluctantly. He waves at Brendon, as if to say good-bye, and Brendon waves back and Spencer has a guilty moment where he realizes that’s the last good-bye they get if things go sourly. 

But the guilty moment passes by and he thinks that they don’t have anything to worry about. Brendon will be out of surgery in a few hours and they’ll go back to being gay for the rest of their days. God bless them. 

Right. 

Brendon’s smile is on Spencer now. “Well?” he asks. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

Spencer wets his lips. 

The guilt passes.

* * *

Spencer walks on one side of the hospital bed as it rolls through the halls, a bumpier ride than he would like and he thinks to himself that they need to sand the floors or something. Make it smoother.

Jon walks on the other side of the bed. They get halfway to the O.R. before he raises his eyebrows, quirks a frown, looks around like he just now realized something was missing. “Sm— _Dr._ Smith?”

Spencer turns his way, keeping one hand secured on the railing of Brendon’s portable bed. Brendon, who is blinking up at the ceiling with an ugly shower cap on his head that hides his pretty black hair, is prattling on to himself about absolutely nothing. He seems as if he is the kind who doesn’t stop speaking. Not even to breath. 

Spencer has all but tuned him out at this point. 

“Mhm?” he hums in response to Jon, who has fixed him with a puzzled expression. 

Jon’s voice is lowered like he doesn’t want Brendon to hear which doesn’t make much sense because Brendon doesn’t seem to be listening to them at all. He is providing his own company.

“Where’s the brother?” Jon wonders. “Randy or—”

“Ryan,” Spencer offers, and Jon snaps his fingers in recognition. “Don’t know. Scurried off; you know how those younger ones do. Probably went to get coffee or something. Sure he’s in the waiting room.”

“Oh.” Jon frowns. “Weird. Seemed the kind who’d want to be around for this.”

“Like I said,” Spencer lies, “I don’t know.”

Jon doesn’t ask any more luckily and Spencer looks ahead down the hall again. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he can clearly make out Brendon looking at him. He has stopped talking to himself and his black eyes are big. 

There might be fear there, but Spencer doesn’t look close enough to find out.

* * *

Brendon is meant to count backwards from ten for the anesthesia to set in and when asked, he laughs loudly and says, “oh, fun! I love kindergarten.”

The nurses giggle to themselves. Apparently, Brendon is an attractive young man. 

He lays stretched out on the operating table, Spencer on one side, Jon on the opposite. Whenever he isn’t winking at female staff—how ironic—Brendon’s gaze is on Spencer. 

Spencer pretends not to notice but he knows the look now. 

Worry.

“Alright, Mr.—”

“Brendon,” he corrects Jon without missing a beat. The smile stays up. 

Jon chuckles. “ _Brendon_. I’ll get it one day.”

“Oh, you won’t have to,” Brendon returns, so pleased with himself, “I’ll be out of here before you’ve got the chance.”

His eyes dart to Spencer. Spencer’s eyes move to Jon. He says, “we should get started.”

Jon agrees. “Alright, Brendon. I want you to count down for me, okay? Back from ten. For real this time. And you’re gonna fall asleep.”

“Do I get a sticker when I wake up?” Brendon jokes. 

Spencer grunts, “just count down, man.”

The nurses are quiet. Jon glares but doesn’t say a word. 

Brendon counts backwards in French. He makes it to ‘cinq’ before he is out like a light. 

The entire time he speaks, his worried eyes stay on Spencer. 

* * *

Jon removes the appendix, no problem, no complication. 

All of Brendon’s organs are bright and pink and shiny. They poke around and they find nothing worrying. 

“A perfect body if there ever was one,” Jon says and the staff agrees. 

Spencer breathes a sigh of relief when they close him up. 

“See?” Jon asks behind his mask, shucking off bloody gloves into the disposal. “Easy peasy. What’d I say to you?”

“Cut and dry,” Spencer relays, his heartbeat finally slowing to a normal rhythm. “And it was.”

“And it was!” Jon chants.

Spencer nods slowly to himself. 

And it was.

* * *

They meet Ryan in the waiting room soon after—Brendon neatly stowed away into his bed, sound asleep like a baby, tucked into the covers how Ryan’s face was tucked into his neck.

Jon and Spencer approach together, noticing Ryan immediately in one of the chairs, hunched over, holding onto a coffee cup with both hands, knee bouncing up and down. 

He is wearing a scarf now and Spencer has to think to himself that of course the man is gay, because no self-respecting straight man would be caught dead in a scarf inside in seventy-degree weather. 

“Mr. Ross,” Jon announces as they near and Ryan snaps his head up, standing without question. 

The idiot has an expression on his face like he already knows that Brendon is dead—he just _knows_ it.

Jon gives him a reassuring face and says, “he’s asleep in his room whenever you want to see him.”

The breath that Ryan lets out is terribly brittle and it sounds to Spencer like his whole soul leaves his body in that sigh. But he cracks on a smile, shaking his head in a jittery manner and he says to Jon, just as before, “thank you. Thank you so much.”

Jon bobs his head. “Always a pleasure.”

Jon tells Ryan they will be monitoring Brendon the next few days, just to make sure nothing happens, but then they are home free. 

Ryan keeps breathing like he is dying.

* * *

“You’re doing it,” Jon hums over coffee four weeks later. They are sitting outside in the hospital courtyard for lunch and Jon has his legs kicked up into the wire chair beside him, lounging about in his own.

He hasn’t shaved in some time and there is stubble on his face that he strokes with one hand while he drinks with the other. 

Brendon Urie has long since left their hospital, Ryan Ross and his homosexuality along with him. 

“Doing what?” Spencer asks absently, staring blankly across the open area to the windows of the towering building. 

Jon takes a sip from his cup. “Thinking. You know how I feel about it.”

“Sorry,” Spencer says although it lacks truth and sets his own cup on the round black table between them. “It’s a hard thing to stop.”

“No, it’s not,” Jon says. “Here, I’m not thinking. Look. Nothing going on up here. I’m being.”

“That’s because you’re a moron,” Spencer teases. “It’s not hard to stop thinking for a moron.”

Jon finds it funny. “Yeah, sure. If you wanna believe that.”

Spencer doesn’t say anything back but he traces the lid of his coffee with a finger. He got six hours yesterday. He’s essentially fully rested. His brain buzzes with the extra energy. 

“So.” Jon drinks languidly. “What’s got ya going?”

“Huh?” Spencer shakes his head. “No. Nothing. Nothing’s got—”

“C’mon,” Jon whines. “Just tell me. I won’t spill your nasty little secrets. Just let me in a bit. I’m dying here!”

Spencer sighs. He directs his eyes to the open sky above them. Building on all four sides. Trapped in. The sky lacks clouds and he thinks it’s a metaphor for something but he doesn’t know what. He asks, “remember the appy you did a few weeks back?”

“Which one?” Jon asks genuinely. 

Spencer chews his lip. “Young guy. Twenties. Hawaiian or something. Brendon Urie.”

Jon cocks a brow. He waves a hand around. “Uh? French count guy?”

Spencer nods. 

Jon seems to let it click then and he agrees, “yeah. Your happy case. The case I chose for you. The case to make you happy. The case, chosen by me, to make you happy. Your happy case?”

“Yes,” Spencer groans. “My _happy_ case.”

“Yeah, sure.” Jon leans back with his coffee. He scratches his cheek. “What about it?”

“That’s what I’m thinking about.”

Jon pouts. “That’s not nearly as nasty as I was hoping.”

“It’s not some secret I’m hiding,” Spencer tells him in exasperation. “It’s just what I’m thinking about. That guy, Brendon Urie.”

“I mean he was an interesting character, I guess… but… fun guy.” Jon is thoughtful, trying to figure out exactly what Spencer is on about. “Counted backwards in French, I remember that.”

“Yeah.” Spencer puckers his lips. “He was just… he smiled like a dunce and cracked jokes while he was in pain and… He never stopped _talking_.”

Jon snickers. “Is that it?”

“What?”

“Is that what you’re thinking about?” Jon seems humored. “That he was happy?”

Spencer’s eyes widen. “ _What_?”

Jon drops his jaw a tad and he moves forward in his chair to better articulate. “You’re thinking about that French kid because you can’t comprehend the fact that he’s happy! Oh, that’s good. Yeah, Spence, some people are happy. I know it’s shocking.”

“W—” Spencer twitches. “I—”

“No, no, I get it.” Jon drains his coffee and raises his hands in surrender. “Happy people are an enigma, I understand. Keep on thinking, huh? You’ll get it eventually. Just keep thinking, Smith.”

Jon stands with a subtle skip in his step and chunks his coffee cup in the nearest trash can without a second thought. 

“C’mon.” He gestures with his head to the doors. “Just got beeped. Room 310.”

Spencer trails after him. He argues, “I’m… _happy_.” 

Jon laughs like it’s hilarious. 

“What?” Spencer insists desperately. “I _am_!”

“Sure, you are pal.” Jon claps him on the back. 

Spencer wants to say, _it doesn’t have anything to do with me being happy, I’m just thinking about the fact that I knew those two were homosexuals and I didn’t say anything. I let them masquerade around like brothers and I didn’t say a damn thing about it_.

He frowns to himself as he walks the halls. 

Why _didn’t_ he say anything?

“C’mon, Happy Hippo!” Jon urges, jogging down the hall.

Spencer follows but the frown stays.

* * *

By week six, Spencer is over it. He’s completely over it. Brendon Urie and his appendix and his homosexual partner. He’s over it. So fucking over it.

He is lying in bed with Linda sitting up beside him, reading a book. She has on a t-shirt that belongs to him, far too big on her, reading glasses, and her blonde hair is shower wet and curled over one shoulder. She’s a beautiful woman without a doubt and Spencer counts himself a lucky man. 

“I’m happy,” he tells her out of the blue, watching her profile as she reads. 

She makes a face, peering down at him. “What?”

“I’m happy,” he repeats, not breaking his gaze.

She smiles at him as if it’s endearing, her lips tilting up in a pretty way, and reaches out to stroke down his hair with thin fingers. “Well I’m glad.”

He doesn’t protest but it’s obvious she didn’t hear him right.

She goes back to her book. She recounts in a far off voice as she flips through pages, “I invited Cassie and Jon over for dinner this Friday. I’m thinking we can make it a weekly thing.”

“Okay,” Spencer says even though he doesn’t really agree. 

Maybe it’ll make him happy.

* * *

Week eight and Spencer sees a young man cross the street with messy black hair and a beaming smile stretched over his face. He doesn’t notice Spencer, but he does notice the man on the other side of the intersection waiting for him.

He jogs to greet him and they embrace like they haven’t seen each other in years. Spencer knows it’s probably only been hours. Young love, and all that. Makes you desperate. Delusional.

Spencer can see copper eyes shimmer all the way from his perch.

 _They’re_ happy. 

Spencer resents them. Just a little.

* * *

Spencer goes ring shopping when the leaves turn brown.

He trails around one jewelry store for a long time because he knows that it’s Linda’s favorite, bending down to look into glass displays for nearly an hour and a half, admiring the way that diamonds shimmer, before an employee approaches him, eyebrow cocked dangerously. 

“Hey, man,” the employee, sharply dressed in a black button-down and grey tie, says in a wary tone, “do you need help with anything?”

Spencer straightens up, turning the employee’s way nervously. He massages the back of his neck which has become a habit. “Uh, yeah. My girlfriend and—I want to propose to her and this is her favorite—I don’t have any idea what I’m supposed to be looking for.”

The man chuckles; he is obnoxiously tall and lean, thin, well-placed features and gentle on the eyes. He’s pretty for a man.

“That’s what I’m here for,” the man assures, and bobs his head towards a certain display and starts walking that way, insinuating that Spencer is meant to trail after. “Dallon Weekes by the way, it’s a pleasure.”

“Spencer,” he replies, awkward. “Smith.”

“Nice to meet you, Spencer Smith,” Dallon answers, making no indication with his body that it is actually in any way nice to meet him. But he’s smiling and it isn’t ingenuine, so Spencer doesn’t know. “You look like the kind of man who has no business being in a jewelry store.”

Spencer chuckles, glancing down at his worn boots clobbering across the nice carper, his heavy jeans, and he shovs his hands deeper into the brown jacket he sports. Dallon Weekes was right. He doesn’t look like he fits in the slightest. 

“So,” Dallon purrs as he slides behind the glass counter with ease, “what’s your lady like?”

“Oh well uh…” Spencer thinks. “Her name is Linda. She’s… beautiful. Smart. Kind.”

Dallon stops him there. “You sound like you’re reading off the back of a catalog. Everyone in the world these days is beautiful, smart, and kind. Tell me something that makes her special.”

Spencer freezes up at that because he doesn’t know exactly. 

“She uh—” He swallows— "She reads before bed… with her glasses on. Puts her hair in a bun and wears an ugly face mask and gets under the covers like they’re the only safe place in the world. And she reads these, like, batshit books. Stuff I wouldn’t ever read. Like classics sort of. _Moby Dick_ and shit.” 

Dallon smiles. As if it’s all he’ll ever need to know. “That’s what I mean.”

He nods to himself, collecting data. 

“She sounds like an emerald.”

“Oh, well I certainly think she’s a gem,” Spencer agrees eagerly. 

Dallon deadpans, “the ring.”

Spencer flushes. “Oh.”

Dallon travels a finger along the glass casing until it lands above a simple ring with a square green diamond in the center of it, bracketed by a silver band. 

“There’s your baby,” Dallon says with utmost confidence. 

“Wow,” Spencer mumbles because something about it makes sense; he can see Linda wearing the ring on her finger flashing it to her friends and giggling. He can see an aisle they walk down and the people that turn their way and coo. A white dress billowing out behind Linda and a veil he has to flip up to see her soft face and suddenly he feels a bit sick and he has to look up. 

He can see Dallon’s hands on the glass, a silver band carefully wrapped around his ring finger. It glints easily in the light and Spencer tries to imagine himself wearing a similar band and for the life of him, he can’t. 

He asks, concerned, “you’re married, aren’t you, Mr. Weekes?”

Dallon chuckles. “Uh… Complicated thing. Not legally.”

Spencer draws his brows up. 

“I’m committed,” Dallon tries to explain. “I’ll die with my partner but we aren’t… I mean there’s no document. No proof of purchase.”

It takes Spencer a minute before it hits him and he leans back on his heels, mouth forming an ‘o’ as he says, “you’re gay.”

Dallon flashes a grin. “I’m gay. Sorry if that offends or—”

“No, no.” Spencer waves a hand hurriedly. It doesn’t offend. It doesn’t. He knew gay people. Brendon and Ryan. He knew gays. “I don’t uh… It’s not my place to… What’s his name?”

Dallon seems a tad taken aback by the question and his voice softens significantly when he answers, “Josh.”

“Right.” Spencer nods rapidly, trying to get his thoughts to slow down. “How long?”

“Four years.”

Spencer whistles.

“And you and your lady?” Dallon indulges. His fingers still hover above the green diamond. 

“Six.”

Dallon grins, big and broad, clean and white. It reminds Spencer of Brendon. “Damn. It’s a life, isn’t it?”

Spencer chuckles. “It’s something.”

“Your girl wants a ring like this.” Dallon taps the glass with his pointer finger and it shakes beneath the pressure.

Spencer waits a beat. He imagines a wedding with flowers he and Linda chose together and a cake with a topper and a photographer that keeps yelling at them to be cuter together and actual people. Actual people he invites. He loves. He licks over his lips. “How much?”

“1,115 dollars,” Dallon recites from memory and Spencer nearly pukes on the spot. 

“One thou—” He starts in a heave and Dallon smirks. 

“Six years, Mr. Smith,” Dallon informs, “you should be paying a hell of a lot more.”

And Spencer can’t help but agree as he hands over his pocketbook. 

He walks out of the store 1,230 dollars poorer, an emerald ring in his pocket, and a sudden skip to his step. 

He reckons this is what happiness feels like.

* * *

Four months go by. The leaves are gone.

Spencer has tucked a box with an emerald ring into his locker at the hospital. He sees it every time he changes into his scrubs but he hasn’t popped the question. He’s worried about popping the question. 

It’s not fear of rejection that’s stopping him. 

He knows that Linda will say yes. 

That’s what’s scaring him. 

Marriage is a thing, isn’t it? It’s a commitment. It’s everything. Signing away yourself to someone else. Spencer loves Linda, he does. But he’s worried she’s making the wrong decision when she chooses him everyday. 

Jon stops him in the hallway, practically bouncing up and down—he doesn’t know about the ring. The only person who knows about the ring is Dallon; Spencer’s meant to have lunch with him today actually but judging by the way that Jon is jittering about, Spencer will probably have to cancel that. 

“What?” he asks, tilting back from the way Jon vibrates. 

“Unsolvable,” is what Jon spits back with, all too eager, and Spencer gives him a confused expression. “Spencer! They have an unsolvable case! For us. You and me. We’ve got this!”

“An unsolvable case?” Spencer repeats. “For residents? This doesn’t seem like a reward, I—”

“It’s a reward if you make it one,” Jon blurts and he turns swiftly, his coat flapping the wind like a bird with frantic wings. Spencer knows well enough to start after him. “Twenty-three-year-old male. Apparently, he got a surgery a while ago, right? But he’s still sick. So they think—right—that it’s a post-op infection but _nope_! He’s getting sicker and sicker with no explanation and, my man, that is where we—”

“That’s where we come in,” Spencer mutters in unison. 

Jon seems giddy beyond belief. He’s happy. Spencer knows that about Jon. He’s a happy guy. He likes his job. He’s fine with the dead babies and praying families. He can do it. He’s happy.

Jon rounds the corner to room 313, grinning like a madman. 

“You shouldn’t be smiling like that if the guy is dying,” Spencer says to his side and Jon is alarmed. “He’s what? Twenty-three you said? C’mon. He’s just a kid.”

“He’s a mystery disease kid, is what he is.” Jon grins a wicked grin. 

Spencer doesn’t say anything but there’s a pit in his stomach when Jon opens the door. It scares the hell out of him that the moment they enter the room, Jon’s demeanor changes entirely, his eyes go from elated to Listening and his evil smile drowns into a sympathizing one. 

Spencer nearly rears back in actual physical alarm, but he manages to keep it down. 

“Hello Mr—” Jon turns to read the chart in his hand at the same time that Spencer turns to the patient’s bed and his veins constrict and he finishes, “Brendon.” 

Brendon Urie is sitting up in bed the same as before, a different shaded hospital gown wrapped around his frame this time, no leather jacket on his shoulders, but an arm still around his stomach. His hair is longer than it was half a year ago, shaggier, and a ghost of stubble is on his cheeks. He doesn’t look bad; he doesn’t. But he looks sicker. 

His smile is just as wide as last time around.

“Ah, Dr. Dick!” Brendon exclaims without missing a beat, sitting up with more excitement. “You remembered! Ryan! Ryan, look who it is; our savior over here. Joy days.” 

He turns to the chair in the corner of the room for a response—no window in room 313—where Ryan Ross is sitting, scarf-less this time. 

Now _Ryan_ looks bad. 

His eyes are sunken. His pale skin is paler. His hair is uncut and hangs over his forehead in strips. He doesn’t smile at the sight of Spencer and Jon, but he rises from his seat to greet them, feet dragging. 

“Dr. Walker, Smith.” It is monotone. “I would say it’s nice to see you again but—”

“Circumstances,” Jon agrees, and he sounds like he cares. Spencer thinks bitterly that Jon is a lying bastard but doesn’t voice it. “Don’t you worry, uh, Mr., uh—"

There’s an obvious beat. 

He doesn’t remember Ryan’s name. 

He doesn’t remember Ryan’s _name_.

Ryan knows Jon doesn’t remember his name too; Spencer can see the way his copper, penny, eyes twitch. Like they’ve been dropped in a puddle and it has splattered across the pavement. 

Spencer jumps in to conclude, “Mr. Ross. We’re going to do everything we can to figure this out, alright? I don’t want you to worry about a thing, okay? Dr. Walker and I have this.”

Ryan’s eyes meet his. There is skepticism but then it folds into acceptance. Spencer knows why. Ryan’s repeating questions in his head. And the biggest one there is, _what the hell else can I do_?

And the answer’s easy. There’s nothing.

* * *

“You didn’t remember his name.” Spencer is seething as Jon and he walk the hall away from Brendon’s room. “You didn’t remember his goddamn _name_.”

Jon scoffs. He doesn’t seem to understand. “Was I supposed to? What the hell are you getting so bent out of shape over? I’ve seen about a hundred different patients in the last two weeks and you expect me to remember one run of the mill appy?”

“French kid!” Spencer insists. “French kid, you can’t forget!”

“Of course I can forget!” Jon’s voice darkens. 

Oh. That’s how he does it. Spencer gets it now. That’s how he’s happy. 

He doesn’t care. Blatantly, he doesn’t care. He doesn’t remember those babies’ names, the parents faces, the tears, and the lives ruined by—he doesn’t care. 

“How can you not care?” Spencer asks because he simply doesn’t get it. 

“I do care,” Jon says urgently, “trust me, I do, but—God, if I took to heart every case that—I’d be buried, Spence. Fuck, I’d be buried.”

And Spencer realizes that’s what it is. He’s been burying himself. He’s fucking buried. 

He growls and wipes hurriedly at his nose. He has a lunch meeting. He hisses before he leaves, “you could have remembered his fucking name.”

But Jon couldn’t have. And Spencer shouldn’t have.

* * *

Dallon eats with him in the courtyard. They’ve been friends since the jewelry store encounter; they have the same music interest and Dallon is a slower pace, Spencer thinks and he needs a slower pace these days.

Dallon doesn’t stretch out over two chairs in the same way that Jon does. He sits straight up in his own, singular chair and doesn’t bother anyone else. Dallon keeps to himself. 

He doesn’t drink coffee but a glass of water. Then again though, Dallon sleeps. He doesn’t need the pick-me-up.

Spencer can’t say the same for himself and Jon. 

“You’re pissed,” Dallon observes after a few minutes quiet. His water is on the table and his hands are in his lap.

“You’re right,” Spencer returns because he is and he’s easy to read. He can’t hide much. “I’m super fucking pissed.”

When he doesn’t explain, Dallon follows up, “okay, why?”

“It’s a patient,” Spencer says before shaking his head. “Well… it’s because of a patient, it’s nothing that the patient did or… It’s… I—”

“Use your words, Smith.”

“Jon didn’t remember his name,” Spencer blurts. It is making his guts feel like they’re flaming. He’s furious. There’s no other word for it. He’s furious. Granted, five months ago he didn’t give a shit about Brendon Urie. But something about it. Something about him being happy. 

It’s enough to make him crazy.

“What?” Dallon asks, confused. “Who?”

“Jon,” Spencer repeats because Dallon knows who Jon is, they’ve been friends nearly three months, “didn’t remember a patient’s name. We did this case about seven months or so ago, I guess it would be, and he’s back and Jon doesn’t remember his—”

“Don’t you treat like a thousand patients or something in that time?” Dallon questions, which is a good point they do. But they’re people. They have names. Names matter. 

“He should have fucking remembered.” Spencer brandishes a finger at Dallon’s face before stabbing himself in the chest with it. “ _I_ remembered!”

Dallon gives him a gentle smile. “You’re a special case, Spencer.”

Spencer scoffs roughly and sinks down in his seat, hunching his shoulders into his neck. The breeze is cold and he pretends that he is trying to get warm. Really he’s trying not to blow up. His insides are far too hot. 

“Who is he?” Dallon wants to know. He reaches for his water. “The patient.”

“Kid named Brendon Urie,” Spencer informs him, “twenty-two, got his appendix taken out a while ago but now he’s back, mysterious sickness, won’t go away, keeps getting worse.”

“What makes him special?” Dallon asks and Spencer knows how to reply instantly. 

“He’s happy.” Spencer rubs at his temple. He can’t wrap his mind around it. “He can’t stop smiling, _ever_. I mean the kid’s been in pain I don’t know how long but he smiles and smiles. Wants to be the center of attention. He counted down in French.”

“What?”

“The anesthesia,” Spencer explains, as it occurs to him that not everyone knows the French story, “you have to count down from ten and he counted in fucking French.”

“He’s _happy_ ,” Dallon repeats and Spencer nods emphatically. A beat follows and Dallon seems to notice the way Spencer stares into oblivion and it’s likely he can hear him thinking. Spencer has room-rocking thoughts after all. “And…?”

“He’s gay.” Spencer doesn’t know how to say it any better than that. “He’s gay and he’s got a partner here with him.”

Dallon arches his eyebrows up, taken aback by the admission. He knows the rules though, being gay, and he says, “you aren’t allowed to—”

“They’re pretending to be brothers,” Spencer informs and he can’t help but snicker slightly. It’s a dumb idea. They’re young and dumb. So fucking young. “I’m the only one that knows and… I can’t turn them in. I couldn’t make myself. They’re kids, y’know?”

Dallon’s voice is low. “I know.”

Spencer lets out a shaky breath. Takes a second. “They’re in love. I think.”

Spencer memorizes the ugly shape of a cloud overhead of him. Thinks it looks sort of like a dog but not quite. Could be a face. Hell, it could be God for all he knew. The sky isn’t part of the hospital, after all. God is allowed everywhere else. The cloud may be God. 

“His partner’s name is Ryan. Ross. Ryan Ross, which Jon didn’t remember. The kid’s scared. I mean just _terrified_. When we did the appy—a fucking appy, Dallon, as mundane as things go—this kid was shaking over it. I just…” Spencer looks at Dallon pitifully. Says the pure truth, as stripped down as it could be. “I don’t want him to die, Dallon.”

Dallon’s blue eyes are mournful. He gives the best advice Spencer has gotten in a long time, “then don’t let him.”

* * *

Spencer hasn’t slept in a while. He keeps meticulously rubbing at his eyes because his body knows he hasn’t. His head hurts and his limbs ache. He hasn’t spoken to Brendon since yesterday; he’s had other patients to attend to.

But Brendon is the one on his mind. 

He knows that Brendon is still here in the hospital, camped out in his room with no window, laughing and joking with his Ryan sitting diligently at the edge of his bed like a dog next to an owner, staring into those copper eyes and smiling. 

Spencer thinks to himself as he carries a chart through the halls of the hospital to find Jon that he’s going to sit beside Linda in bed tonight and tell her he’ll sit there with her forever if she wants him to. 

He could propose after that. Maybe. 

He tells himself that he should make a reservation at a restaurant—as that is what people do when they propose—and put the ring in champagne. Can emeralds go in champagne? He’ll have to ask Dallon later.

He is so preoccupied with his own musings that he barely registers the form approaching him from down the hall until they are nearly face to face. 

“Dr. Smith,” the boy—man—says once he is close enough. 

Spencer stops in front of Ryan in the middle of the hall. He blurts, “oh, Ryan. Mr. Ross—”

“Ryan is really alright,” the young man assures. He sways back on his feet and rubs at one of his arms. He is wearing an olive colored sweater with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows and a string is loose—he must have been playing with it—and drapes down his creamy colored skin. It looks too big for his frail form. 

“Yes, of course. Ryan.” Spencer smiles hurriedly. He feels as though the smile doesn’t look right on him but if Ryan notices, he doesn’t voice it. “What can I do for you?”

“I was just uh.” Ryan purses his lips. “No one’s been by in a while and—”

Spencer inhales. He wants to lie and tell the kid it’s going to be fine but something keeps him from it. “Ryan, we’re doing everything we can to find out what’s wrong with your—with Brendon.”

Ryan watches him. He bites down on his bottom lip as he asks, “you don’t know?”

Spencer gives a defeated shake of his head and shrug of his shoulders. He assures, “but we’re working on it, okay? I’ll give you an update as soon as I can.”

Ryan shivers a bit when he breathes and he wraps both his arms tightly around his middle. Spencer stresses. Wants to tell him it’s all going to be alright. It’s all going to be alright, after all, isn’t it? He’ll figure it out. He has to figure it out. 

Brendon’s happy. Happy people live. They have to. 

“In the meantime,” he tells Ryan, “sit with him. Entertain him.”

“He entertains himself,” Ryan mutters in a half attempt at a joke and Spencer laughs softly. 

“I’ve noticed that. But uh…” 

Ryan stands in front of him, arms drawn around himself with care, and those penny eyes are scared. He’s scared. Terrified, if Spencer’s honest. No one’s telling him anything. But it’s for a reason. No one knows a goddamn thing. 

“I’ll give you an update as soon as I have one, Ryan,” he promises. And it is a promise. He’s going to figure this out and he’s going to give an answer. He’s going to have one by the end of the day. He is. 

Ryan allows the promise to pass without complaint and excuses himself with a thank you. Spencer pretends to accept it and heads his own way to Jon.

* * *

He finds the other resident in an on-call room.

He’s not surprised, Jon finds rest when and where he can. He is passed out on the bottom bunk of the small room, perfectly in his element, a bare hand tossed over his eyes to keep the pesky light away and a leg is hanging off the side with his shoe on the ground. He looks like a mess.

Spencer kicks him in the shin to wake him up. 

Jon grunts in an unattractive manner when he wakes up, more of a snort than anything else and jerks forward in the bed, a hand flying to his forehead like he might loose it if he doesn’t hold it to him. 

“What?” he gasps before his gaze lands on Spencer. “Smith? Dude. What the _hell_? Have some respect, huh? I’m sleeping here.”

“Not anymore,” Spencer returns and he shoves Jon’s leg over so he can sit down on the cot. It sinks uncomfortably beneath the added weight. Nothing like his bed back home. Jon groans but doesn’t protest further. “We have work to do.”

“What? Work?” Jon points at the chart in Spencer’s hands. “Oh, for God’s sake don’t tell me that’s—”

“Brendon Urie’s chart,” Spencer admits, and Jon lets out a moan of agony and lays back down on the bed dramatically. He covers both eyes with his hands, but Spencer goes on despite it, “don’t complain; listen.”

Muffled behind palms. “I’m all ears, man. You see this? It’s my ‘I care so much’ face, can’t you tell?” 

“You’re the one that wanted an unsolvable case,” Spencer reminds and Jon grunts in repulsion. “But an unsolvable case isn’t worth shit until you solve it, okay? So pay attention.”

That seems to catch Jon’s attention. He does love a lick of glory. 

“It’s an infectious process, isn’t it?” Spencer says thoughtfully. “There’s nothing else it could be… And there was mild hemolysis on his C.B.C.”

“So what?” Jon asks, his hands rubbing over his face like he’s never felt his own skin before. “Anemia? Rhabdo? Could be any number of things, you prick.”

Jon thinks for a second. Something seems to click. He props himself up on his elbows. 

He asks, “was there any hematuria?” 

“No.” Spencer shakes his head, turning the page and that makes Jon snort again. “But there was some yeast in his urine.”

“Oh, intriguing, _yeast_ ,” Jon’s voice purrs. His head is angled toward the top bunk like he wishes he was up there instead. Away from Spencer. “A contaminant. Hemolysis mighta been wrong. Bad blood draw?”

“Every day?” Spencer asks, incredulous. “No. That doesn’t make sense. The hemolysis isn’t—we shouldn’t focus on that…”

Jon hums to himself and proceeds to lay back down on the cot, fitting his hands up behind his head. He pets his own hair aimlessly. 

“I’m hungry,” he declares like it matters. “You want lunch? You look hungry. I’ll pay.”

“Can’t eat,” Spencer answers which is the truth. “I need to figure this out.”

“You don’t need to figure it out _today_ ,” Jon explains slowly. “The kid isn’t dying.”

“He’s in _pain_.” Spencer glowers. 

Jon chuckles and says it like he thinks it’s funny. “We’re _all_ in pain, baby.”

Spencer sighs heavily. He waits a moment. _Yeast_. A small pang goes up into his ribcage. He won’t call it fear but… but there aren’t many other words. He mutters, “I want to get a skin sampling. We need to test his skin.”

Jon sits up fully. “Huh? Skin? What for?”

But Spencer is already off the cot and into the hall.

* * *

Brendon’s skin has cryptococcus. It says far more than it needs to and Jon and Spencer stand outside the door together.

“We’re really gonna ask him the questions?” Jon is staring at Spencer, disbelieving the situation. “Are you sure that—”

“I think I know what this is,” Spencer says back quietly. He thinks he knows. He prays that he’s wrong. That Brendon will answer the right questions with an affirmative but… But Spencer knows otherwise. He knows what it is. Even if he doesn’t want to admit it.

Jon cocks a hip. “You know if he hasn’t, the man could sue us for slander.”

“He won’t sue,” Spencer affirms, and Jon looks unsure. “Trust me. He won’t sue.”

Spencer doesn’t wait for a reply to push the door open and enter with Jon at his heels. One of the first times he remembers himself leading. 

Brendon is sitting up in bed as he so often is. His eyebrows are creased up and he is paler still, but he is smiling at Ryan who is perched on the edge of the bed as he is meant to be. 

“Brendon,” Spencer says as he nears and Brendon replies without missing a beat, “Dr. Detective, what’s the word? Got any leads?”

“Thought I was Dr. Dick,” Spencer responds without properly thinking about it. 

Jon guffaws beside him, obviously surprised he has any sense of humor. 

Brendon’s grin widens. “You’ve been promoted.”

Ryan breaks in, no mood to banter, his eyes hopeful, “you said you’d have an update when you came back.” 

He isn’t getting off the bed as he usually does; he is sitting, almost as though he is daring Jon and Spencer to ask him to move. He isn’t touching Brendon at all, isn’t very close, and the average person would probably still think they are brothers. But Spencer knows more than he’s supposed to. 

“Well, we should,” Jon says, “soon. But we need to ask a couple questions first, okay?”

“Oh! Family Feud!” Brendon jokes and Spencer returns a pained smile. 

“Try not to answer in French this time,” Spencer tells him, and Brendon seems to love that response. He jokes this time it will be in Italian. Italian is attractive. Ryan ducks his head. 

Brendon Urie is a romantic, it seems. 

“Have you traveled out of the country recently?” Spencer asks him and before each question he can hear a voice in his head begging _please say yes_. “Somewhere tropical? Taiwan or Argentina, perhaps?”

Brendon puckers his lips and answers, “no” which means ‘no’ in every language. 

“Do you live near a bird aviary?” Jon butts in. “Around a lotta pigeons per chance?” 

Ryan raises his head at this point. He doesn’t seem to like the questions as he repeats, “pigeons? What sort of questions—”

“No,” Brendon answers with an accent, “pero me gustan las palomas.”

“That’s Spanish,” Ryan mumbles to his side to which Brendon mumbles back, “I don’t speak Italian.”

“Uh, Ryan.” Spencer clears his throat. It is closing steadily and he wishes Dallon was there to hand over his glass of water. “I’d like you to leave the room now.”

Both Brendon and Ryan jerk their heads up in alarm at that and Brendon’s smile fully falls. His face looks remarkably different without it. 

“Wait wh—” Ryan starts, clearly horrified. 

Jon replies easily, to dissuade concern, “there’s questions family aren’t allowed to hear. Patient confidentiality.”

That’s a lie, really. Ryan could stay. He just probably doesn’t want to for this. Or, other family members wouldn’t. Spencer already knows what the answer is. Ryan could stay. 

But Spencer doesn’t want to see those copper eyes widen just yet.

“Please,” Spencer implores to Ryan. 

Ryan looks from Brendon to the doctors, panic stricken, before he forces out, “I uh. Okay. Okay, I’ll be outside.” The next part to Brendon. “I’ll just be outside.”

And the door shuts softly when he leaves. 

Jon and Spencer turn back to Brendon. They don’t even get to open their mouths before Brendon says, “I have cancer, don’t I?”

Jon doesn’t even answer. He asks, “Mr. Urie—”

There’s a weakness to his voice as he corrects, “ _Brendon_.”

“I’d like to ask you if, uhm.” Jon clears his throat. “If you have recently or ever taken part in sexual situations with the male gender.”

Spencer hates how clinically he says it. Jon is hardly ever clinical but now… Now his eyes squint as he asks and he leans back. Like he doesn’t want to be too close. 

Brendon blinks. Like he doesn’t quite get it. Doesn’t understand what he’s being asked. “I—Are you asking me if I’m _gay_?”

Jon can’t even speak. He only nods.

Brendon scoffs nervously and his black eyes go for Spencer. He knows that Spencer knows. And he opens his mouth like he’s going to say it, like he’s going to shout and say, _you knew. You fucking knew and you tattled_. 

Spencer darts a glance to Jon at his side, hoping Brendon can see it. Knows not to blow Ryan and he’s cover. If he blows that cover, there will be consequences. Serious consequences. 

Brendon realizes. He shuts his mouth.

“We’re not here to judge, Mr. Urie,” Jon tells him, but he doesn’t say ‘Brendon’ so they all know he’s there to judge, “we just need a yes or a no answer so we can rule out all possibilities or—”

“What does—” Brendon catches himself and he taps his chest with his fingers as if to feel his heart beat— “What _would_ being gay… determine for you…?” 

He fidgets in the bed like he doesn’t have enough space. 

Jon doesn’t break his gaze. His eyes aren’t as listening as they used to be. “We believe, Mr. Urie, that you have G.R.I.D.”

Brendon’s black eyes grow twice their size and his mouth falls open. “ _What_? You—That’s not even a real diagnosis. It doesn’t… It doesn’t exist it—”

“G.R.I.D exists. Gay Related Immune Deficiency.” Spencer’s body is stiff. “And you’re right, no one knows the full scope of it but… we do know that it affects gay men and it—It’s a bit like cancer… in a sense but—”

“You’re giving me a death sentence,” Brendon whispers. “I can’t uh… I can’t have G.R.I.D, I—No. I’m twenty-two, guys, I—” He breaks off in a horrified laugh. “I can’t _die_. I haven’t lived.”

But he has no say in that, does he?

And God doesn’t make compromises.

* * *

They discharge Brendon that afternoon. There’s nothing else to be done. Everyone knows that.

From the upper level of the hospital, through a glass elevator, Spencer can watch two young people wander from the waiting room, discharged. Ryan’s arm is wrapped tight around Brendon’s shoulders, keeping him close. 

Spencer and Jon didn’t tell Ryan. They let Brendon break the news. But as they exit, Spencer sees the red irritated eyes Ryan sports and the way he sniffs and wipes his nose hurriedly to make sure no one sees. The way he trembles as they walk together.

Brendon smiles as he leaves. Big, open, happy. Like he doesn’t have a care in the world. Like he couldn’t care less about dying. It’s an act, is what Spencer has come to realize. It’s all an act.

He gave Brendon his number. His personal one. Says he can call whenever he needs. Spencer doesn’t have the godliest idea how he plans to help, what he plans to do if Brendon ever actually calls, but he figures it’s better than nothing.

He and Jon watch the two wander out of the hospital doors together. Brendon strides tall and Ryan staggers. 

Jon shakes his head as if he just can’t believe it. Any of it. 

“Goddamn G.R.I.D,” he mutters out. “Wow. Good on you for catching that, man. I never would’ve—” 

“Yeah…” Spencer swallows. “I had a hunch s’all.”

“Solved the unsolvable case, you did.” Jon grins, big and wide. “Brilliant.”

Spencer clenches his teeth and grinds them together. He repeats, emotionless, “brilliant.”

“Y’know,” Jon starts as the elevator goes down a floor, completely conversational, as if he hasn’t just served a man death on a plate, “it’s only the second case here. In Chicago.”

Spencer glances his way. He feels remarkably hollow. 

“Only six in San Fran,” Jon goes on and he chortles to himself. “I mean damn, Spence, no one has proof this thing’s even real.”

“It’s real,” Spencer returns, sharper, and he knows it is. 

He knows it’s real because he’s friends with Dallon. And Dallon’s told him it’s real. Dallon says the gay community is currently in a state of stress. Not very many cases but more than are comfortable. In places like California or New York, cases double faster than anyone is keen to admit. 

Dallon has friends in New York. Gay friends. And their friends are dying. People are dying. G.R.I.D is real. It’s very real. 

“The government isn’t even funding research,” Jon responds, and he takes a moment to admire his hands, frowning at his nails. Nothing else matters but his cuticles. “That’s gotta tell you something, huh?”

Spencer is quiet. 

“I think it’s crazy though, don’t you?” Jon asks. “I mean a disease that affects gay men only. You ever heard of a disease that affects lesbians? Or straights, heaven forbid. I mean it just—” He snorts— “It’s a thing. Crazy.”

Spencer has the urge to punch Jon Walker in the face all of a sudden. He resists the urge but it’s only barely.

* * *

Spencer stares at the ceiling of his bedroom. He can’t sleep at the hospital; he can’t sleep at home. He’s decided his body is incapable of rest.

His thumb twitches. It has a mind of its own. Its mind tells it to dance. 

Linda is reading a fucking book. 

“One of my patients is dying,” Spencer relays to the ceiling. 

Linda keeps reading. “I’m sorry. But it’s a hospital, isn’t it, darling? Shouldn’t you be—”

“I am used to it,” Spencer chides, “it’s just that—"

He covers his face with hands, wipes down his mouth and his hands land on his stomach. He’s in his pajamas. They’re so plush and cozy that they’ve lost all comfort. 

“He’s too young…” Spencer tries to make his thumb stop twitching by holding it down. “To die.”

Linda sighs. He hears her close her book and when she speaks it’s gentle and directed only to him. It’s what he needs. “Spencer, don’t tell me you were in Peds again. You hate Peds. You say it constantly.”

“It wasn’t Peds,” he groans, “it was a… a twenty-two-year-old kid, y’know? And he just… He has no business dying.”

Linda nods. She asks, “cancer?”

Spencer almost corrects, says the truth, but he pauses and feels that he should withhold it. “Yeah.”

Her fingers card through his hair and they are kind as they make their way through his tangled locks. “Terrible thing. I don’t know how you do it every day, I just don’t.”

Spencer doesn’t know either.

* * *

He waits some time to tell Dallon about it. They keep having lunches and meeting up for beers and at one point, Spencer even meets Josh, who is nice and soft-spoken, and he gets it, why Dallon and Josh love one another. It makes sense to him. They’re happy.

Dallon doesn’t ask about Brendon, he knows his boundaries. Jon has all but forgotten him, that’s why he doesn’t ask. Brendon is a footnote in his long book of ruined lives that he put on a big shelf and lets collect dust until he fills another page. But Dallon knows. Dallon knows and remembers Brendon and he wants to ask but he doesn’t because he knows his lane. 

They are at a bar when they speak of it. 

Josh is with them, but he doesn’t talk much. He much prefers the company of his daquiri which he sips through a contented smile, childish, fingering at the tiny umbrella half the while. He is seven years younger than Dallon and sometimes it shows. Sometimes it doesn’t. 

Dallon keeps sending him fond grins every now and then and Josh returns them. That’s love then, isn’t it? Four years and you still find it funny when they poke an umbrella in a daiquiri. 

Dallon has a black button-down on with the sleeves rolled up, paired with dress pants and Josh has on a t-shirt and jeans. Spencer is much the same but his shirt is slightly more expensive and his jeans aren’t ripped. 

His jacket is draped over the back of the chair. 

He stares at his beer. 

Dallon drinks his water. He raises the glass and says, completely serious, “nectar of the God’s.”

Spencer forces a laugh and Josh snorts before sipping at his own drink. 

Dallon waits a moment, his gaze dancing over Spencer for some time in the bar lights before he lowers his voice to Spencer alone and asks, “hey, man, are you alright?”

“I’d like to invite you to dinner soon,” Spencer surmises, which isn’t an answer and is, and takes a therapeutic sip of his beer. “At my house with Linda and I. Josh of course is invited. I’d like to have you both.”

“Thanks,” Josh pipes up briefly. He’s kidding. “Love being an afterthought.”

“We’ll check our schedules later,” Dallon says, nudging Josh’s knee with his own, “you can leave me a voicemail and we’ll figure it out. We’d love to.”

“Have you gotten tested?” Spencer asks completely out of the blue, but it isn’t out of the blue to him, he’s been thinking about it for a long while. He was already there, Josh and Dallon only just arrived. “For G.R.I.D?”

Dallon pulls back in a flash, and Josh drops his little umbrella into his cup with a splash. They seem as though they’ve been hit. Dallon bites, “what the hell, Spencer?”

“I think you should,” Spencer says, “I would just hate for—It only affects gays and you’re a gay so—"

“Spencer,” Dallon growls and although his voice is level, there is a darkness beneath the surface. Trembling darkness that one wrong word could release. “I appreciate you caring. I do. You’re a friend. But don’t talk to me like I’m ‘a gay,’ okay? My health isn’t anything you need to worry yourself about, doctor or no. Josh and I are going to do what we need to do and we’re gonna be just fine. Does that satisfy you?”

Spencer’s a bit red in the face as he nods. 

Josh picks his umbrella out of his drink. “My boy’s a bit of a preacher, isn’t he?”

Spencer drinks his beer awkwardly. He doesn’t agree or disagree. Dallon drinks his water with tense posture. Josh continues to play with his little umbrella.

* * *

In the next month, eight cases of G.R.I.D come into the hospital. Spencer refuses to work on any of them.

* * *

When November of 1982 rolls around A.I.Ds (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) is the coined term. The new name seems to make Jon realize it’s a real disease.

There’s a wing for it in the hospital. No one goes unless they have to. No one wants to. 

Spencer goes every few days to glance into the rooms. He’s looking for someone in particular.

Dallon quits his job at the jewelry store. Suddenly he’s a homosexual advocate. He works in an office with other gay men. Answers phones. Logs cases. Fights for life. 

So much for being referred to as ‘a gay.’ Dug his own grave on that one. He asks Spencer to give him all updates that come. Spencer does. 

It’s a weird time to be alive, Spencer thinks.

* * *

“How do you think it’s spread?” Jon asks him one afternoon. They aren’t on call. They’re outside, taking a stroll along the pavement in the park. The sun is bright and beaming on them, a foil to the cold air that blows at their backs. It’s something of a double date and Linda and Cassie are trailing behind them, prattling on about everything and nothing. They are beautiful together and Spencer thinks Jon and he are some lucky, lucky men for sure.

Spencer’s ring is nearly ten months old and it sits in his locker. 

Linda and he are coming up on seven years. He tries not to think about it. Makes him feel old. Makes him feel like he’s wasted time. But what does he do? Keeps wasting it.

“I don’t know,” Spencer informs. 

“I think it’s sexually transmitted,” Jon tells him like he’s telling a secret at a sleepover. “Can’t be the air, now can it? I bet you money, every time a man has sex with another man, he gets struck down. God’s way of saying hi.”

Spencer chews the inside of his cheek and keeps walking. He ignores the last sentence. They’re outside after all. God could get them here.

* * *

When he calls Dallon later with that information Dallon grumbles, “that’s worthless.”

“That’s how it’s most-likely spread,” Spencer insists and he’s completely serious. “It makes _sense_! If you we could just get you all to—”

“To stop having _sex_?” Dallon laughs at him in a cruel way. “You try telling straight men to stop having sex and see what happens.”

Spencer begs, “this could solve—”

“How long?”

“What?” Spencer stops.

“How long would we have to? Weeks? Months? Years? Our whole fucking life?” Dallon sounds angry through the receiver. More than angry. Furious. “We have to live, Spencer.”

“You’re living to die,” Spencer returns, and he feels tired, his bones breaking inside him and his thumb is twitching again. 

“We need more than that. Other options,” Dallon tries to explain. And that’s all. That’s that. “No one’s going to listen if you tell them that. We’re people, aren’t we?”

“You are,” Spencer agrees sullenly. 

“So treat us like it.”

The dial tone hits.

* * *

Spencer gets another phone call about a week later.

It’s from a number he doesn’t recognize so he doesn’t answer. 

But five words are tucked carefully in his inbox when he checks, horrific in their simplicity. 

Ryan Ross’s voice over speaker, trembling and in a whisper, “I’m afraid to touch him.”

Spencer tries to call back but no one answers. 

It gives him nightmares for the next week.

* * *

It’s an easy thing to ignore, really, if Spencer thinks about it. If you aren’t plugged in to the gay community. If you don’t listen when they yell at you on the street. If you don’t go to that wing of the hospital. If you simply don’t care, then it’s an easy thing to ignore.

Spencer knows that. 

Jon seems to know it better because that is exactly what he is doing. Ignoring.

“It may affect straight men later on,” Spencer says over dinner one night with them. They have yet to have Josh and Dallon over like Spencer wants. Linda is wary of it. But she likes Cassie and Jon so they’re allowed. 

Linda is walking in from the kitchen, a fresh basket of rolls in hand. She has her hair tied up and a few carefully selected blonde strands go over her ears. 

Cassie and Jon are sitting beside each other on the opposite side of the table from Spencer and Linda’s chair. 

Spencer regrets inviting them over. 

Jon looks up from his plate as though he is surprised by the announcement. 

“What?” he asks. 

“The virus.” Spencer moves his fork against the food on his plate. Linda is a lovely cook, really she is, but nothing seems enticing that evening. “It may spread to straight men. Y’know I hear that it’s in Africa in straight women already. Only a matter of time.”

Jon stares at him before looking back down at his own meal. He tries to sound casual. “Uh-huh. And where’d you hear that one?”

“My friend,” Spencer starts to say, “Dallon—”

“Dallon Weekes, Gay Men’s Health, uh-huh. Uh-huh.” Jon taps his utensil against a stump of broccoli. “I know the name. Didn’t know you were hanging out with fags now.”

He feels absolute rage in that moment. Full rage and his thumb twitches and his blood bubbles up and boils in his veins. Cassie is watching Jon out of the corner of her eyes and Linda has come to sit beside Spencer. 

“What are we talking about?” she asks, genuinely unaware. 

Cassie answers, wary, “hospital business.”

“Oh.” Linda turns to Spencer. She narrows her eyes a tad, noticing the way his teeth are clenched. She knows instantly. “This would be about G.R.I.D then, wouldn’t it? The gay cancer.”

“It’s called AIDS now,” Spencer snaps, flinching when she says it. “And it doesn’t just affect gay men.”

Cassie sits up straighter in her seat. “What? Really?”

“ _No_ ,” Jon argues with a stricter tone and his voice is directed at Spencer more than Cassie. All his words are for Spencer alone. “There’s no proof that it will ever spread to anyone else. You know that, Spencer. It’s affecting gays only.”

Spencer drops his fork on the table beside his plate. He announces loudly, “Dallon has connections and they say it’s been documented in Africa in straight women. That means that straight men could be next!”

“Aw, that doesn’t mean jack,” Jon barks, “Dallon’s not some expert and neither are his little faggot friends.”

Spencer bares his teeth how a dog would. “Stop calling him a faggot.”

“Wait, wait—” Linda raises a hand. “It’s affected women? I thought that it was a gay—”

“There’s no documented proof.” Jon stabs a broccoli and eats it like he hates it. Spencer assumes in this analogy, he is meant to be the broccoli. 

“Well, if there’s no documented proof—” Cassie starts. 

“There is!” Spencer insists. “There will be!”

Jon drops his half-eaten broccoli to the table and it bounces on the tablecloth. “Why do you want there to be? Huh? It’s like you _want_ the disease to infect heterosexual people; what the hell do you have against straights?”

Spencer scoffs in alarm. “I don’t have anything against straights. It’s not about _me_ caring. It’s about the rest of the world.”

“The rest of the world wants straights dead?” Jon mocks. “Oh, I see.”

“No,” Spencer answers in a snarl, “it’s the only way that they’ll start paying any attention.”

Jon rolls his eyes and goes back to his food. “Did it ever occur to you,” he asks, “that maybe this is… I don’t know… God’s way of fixing things.”

Spencer stares. He can’t even comprehend the idea. “God’s _what_?”

“Fixing,” Jon repeats. As if it makes all the sense in the world. “I mean it’s only killing gays. That has to tell you something, doesn’t it? Maybe it was meant to be this way.”

Cassie is watching him and something in her eyes tells Spencer that she doesn’t understand. Not the conversation… She doesn’t understand _Jon_. She twists her wedding ring subconsciously. 

Spencer scoffs, shaking his head. He stands from the table, his chair screeching back with the force. 

He hisses, “no. Not in my hospital. God isn’t allowed in my fucking hospital.”

And he leaves his own house just to breathe.

* * *

They’re in room 400 this time.

Brendon and Ryan. 

Spencer wouldn’t have known except for the crucial fact that they ask for him. They specifically request him and so he goes to the room, walking as fast as he can down the hall to get there. It’s his day off but he comes in. 

He doesn’t tell Jon about it. 

He doesn’t knock. Goes right in. 

They sit the same way. Brendon lying in the bed and Ryan sitting beside him on the edge, teetering. But this time Ryan has his head on Brendon’s shoulder. He stiffens when the door opens but upon seeing Spencer, he relaxes and stays put. He knows Spencer knows. 

“Dr. Dick,” he greets in a murmur. 

It is then that Spencer realizes Brendon isn’t smiling. He isn’t doing anything because he is asleep, his eyes closed tight and his full lips parted for him to breath in snores. Suppose then that it is on Ryan to make conversation. 

“What’s happened?” Spencer asks urgently and he steps forward into the room after making sure the door is tightly closed behind him. 

“He fell,” Ryan recounts in a flat tone. He keeps his head balanced on Brendon’s shoulder. Spencer has seen Dallon and Josh in the same position before, Josh laughing and Dallon smiling as they held each other. In the last few months, they’ve held each other more. Spencer has noticed. But with Brendon and Ryan, it’s the opposite. Everything’s the opposite of what it should be. It’s pained.

“Anything broken?” Spencer asks, glancing over Brendon’s form. 

“No,” Ryan answers and he snivels. “But what would even be the point in fixing it if it was?” 

Spencer advances further into the room and he goes to sit in the chair in the corner. The rooms they’ve been placed in keep getting smaller. No window, a few less feet in width than the other. Ryan and Brendon probably don’t mind though. Just so long as the room has a bed for them to sit on together, they’ll be alright.

Spencer occupies the chair and Ryan’s eyes follow him. 

“What can I do?” Spencer questions.

“I should be asking you that,” Ryan says, “what _can_ you do?”

“For him?” Spencer bobs his head to a sleeping Brendon. 

He is skinnier, noticeably. There is a small blossom of purple on his forehead, the mark of the disease and a few on his neck like fingertips pressed to his flesh, choking. Ryan notices Spencer looking at the mark on Brendon’s forehead and uses a hand to brush Brendon’s hair down over it. 

Spencer admits, so so tired, “nothing.”

It is not what Ryan wants to hear and his body quivers. 

“But for you?” Spencer goes on, “I could do a lot.”

Ryan averts his eyes. He doesn’t want to be helped it seems. 

“Can I call your family, Ryan?” Spencer asks like he’s talking to a child. He is. Ryan Ross is twenty-four at the oldest. He’s a child. “Please. Let me call them for you.”

Ryan moves his head to Brendon’s chest. Spencer can watch it struggle to rise and fall. But there’s life. There’s life there. That’s all they need. A smidge of life. 

Ryan says, “there’s no family to call.”

Spencer stares at him. “What?”

Ryan sighs into Brendon’s hospital gown and clutches at it with his fingers desperately. Clings. “It’s just me and him. That’s why I said I was his brother. I know you know that we’re not… Why you didn’t tell anyone I don’t know but… Bren said you knew.”

“I know.” Spencer watches him. “I know you’re… partners.”

Ryan chuckles like the word disgusts him. “Yeah. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Not my place,” Spencer admits even though it’s more than that. “And I know that… wives get to stay with their husbands. You wanted to be able to be there through it all.”

“I was going to be there the entire time,” Ryan snarls, “but you stopped me from going to the operating room.”

Spencer feels guilty. Honestly guilty for it. Made guilty by the way Ryan’s eyes don’t leave him and his teeth clench together and his fingers dig into the blankets of Brendon’s bed. “If I could do it over, I’d let you through no complaints. I’m sorry, Ryan.”

“Don’t be.” Ryan lies there motionless on Brendon, his eyes grapple with where to look. They glisten. “What’s an apology mean anymore, anyway?”

Spencer can’t do anything other than watch him sit there, being. Floundering in his body but on the outside there’s nothing. No movement. His copper eyes lack a shine. 

“We left.”

Ryan’s voice is in a whisper. There’s nothing else to do but talk, Spencer knows that. And there’s no one left to talk to but Spencer. He knows that too. So he listens. 

“We ran away from the real world, me and he, the moment we could. Fled to Seattle and then here to Chicago and pretended we’d never known anyone else in the world. It had always been just us. No families, no school, no religion, no parents, no memories of anyone else. It was just future for us. And now… I don’t know.”

Ryan looks genuinely at a loss. 

“Now it’s nothing. Now there’s nothing.”

Spencer swallows. He doesn’t know how to argue with that. He doesn’t know any facts to refute it. So he sits in his chair across from them wrapped together and he listens. 

It’s the least he can do.

* * *

When Ryan tells Spencer his life story, it goes like this.

He doesn’t start it when he’s young and fresh-faced—all innocent and doe-eyed—like most people start their life stories. Like normal, ordinary, boring people do. Spencer is one of those people who starts the story too early. 

If someone asked him, _tell me your life story,_ he would start by saying, ‘well I was born here in Chicago. I was a ten-pound baby; it’s my big brain. My mom nice to me, my dad too. Never got hurt growing up and my baby crib was painted yellow.”

That is not how Ryan Ross starts his stories. 

His story begins, “Brendon and I met in seventh grade.”

Because Ryan’s life didn’t start until he met Brendon. 

The story chronicles Ryan’s middle school years. The beginning of his teenage life. The girls that filter into it. Girls that come and go. Girls that don’t quite make sense to him because they’re just not as pretty as he thought girls were supposed to be. None had bigger eyes than Brendon. None had fuller lips. None had softer hair. Girls were just girls. Girls didn’t compare to Brendon Urie, Ryan says. 

And, out of the corner of his eyes as Ryan speaks, Spencer can see Brendon sleeping in the hospital bed with deep bruises marring the skin beneath his eyes, his eyebrows constantly creased up. Like he’s going to cry. Beautiful, yeah. Nothing more beautiful than something broken. 

Ryan has gone to sitting up in the bed beside Brendon, folding his legs. Spencer hasn’t moved from the chair. It’s his day off, actually. He has all the time in the world.

When Ryan mentions his dad hitting him, it’s under the breath, it’s an afterthought, background to the bigger picture. If Spencer Smith were a literature inclined man, he could have written an entire rhetorical essay on that one phrase. 

The way that Ryan glances down, peers down at Brendon through the corner of his eyes and says, “And whenever my dad smacked me around, I’d go to him. We’d sit together on his back porch and play Go-Fish. What a stupid game that is, Go-Fish, what the fuck is the point of Go-Fish?”

And if Spencer hadn’t been listening so closely, he may have missed it. 

_Smacked me around._

Not ‘hit,’ not ‘hurt,’ not ‘ _abused_.’ 

Smacked. Simple. Smacked him upside the head a couple times when he got too rowdy. You know how boys are. They get rowdy. Said it with a wave of the hand, careful not to make eye contact when he spoke. Careful not to swallow to thickly or to whimper too loudly when he took Brendon’s limp hand in his own to squeeze. 

Careful. Walking on glass. 

That’s how it went. Ryan’s dad smacked him around and then he’d go to Brendon’s back porch and they would play Go-Fish with one another. That’s how it always went. And then Ryan complained about how stupid Go-Fish was for a while. 

That was another rhetorical strategy right there. Avoiding the subject. Ryan Ross was a master at avoiding the subject. 

Avoided the fact that his father abused him. Avoided the fact that Brendon was the only one who ever knew. Avoided the fact that Go-Fish was actually a good game. 

Most certainly avoided the fact that Brendon and he wouldn’t get to play it again. 

Ryan went on to Highschool. He successfully maintained relationships with three separate girlfriends. Each of them ended it with him after about two months though. It was usually when he refused to kiss them. 

“It scared me, y’know,” Ryan says. “The touching and the kissing and the-the caring… ‘Cause I didn’t, right?”

He looks at Spencer. Desperate for an understanding from him. Spencer nods like he can even possibly make sense of it. 

“It was fucking terrifying.” Ryan lets out a sigh. “How much they cared about me and how much I didn’t give a shit about them. And it was after the third one—Keltie—it was after she broke it off… that Bren and I, we were under the bleachers—"

The bleachers is where they went. That is what Spencer has gathered. Brendon and Ryan scuttled away to the bleachers after school hours so Ryan could postpone going home and they would stand beneath them and hide away from the rest of the world and Brendon would smoke secret cigarettes and Ryan would breathe in smoke. 

“And, I remember it,” Ryan says, “I told him. That Keltie had ended it. And he says to me—” 

Ryan breaks off in a laugh. His smile is wide and shiny white, and Spencer gets it then, why Brendon chose him. For that shy smile. The way it stretches when Ryan doesn’t think about who is watching. When he’s smiling for no one but himself. That right there is enough reason to fall in love with the man. 

“He says it must be a record, she’s the longest one yet, right? And who am I gonna go after next? What girl am I gonna blue-ball next, and of course I have to correct him on the anatomy.”

Ryan is smiling still. Spencer hopes he doesn’t stop any time soon. He looks happy.

“And then he just… I mean it’s out of nowhere, you gotta understand that. He just fucking blurts it out. ‘I’m gay,’ he says to me. ‘I’m gay.’”

Ryan takes pause. The smile fades. He stares at Brendon’s hand hanging in his own. The way the fingers don’t attempt to hold. The way he might as well be clutching a corpse. And instantly he retracts. As if horrified by the realization. He holds the hand to his own beating heart. 

“And?” Spencer prompts. 

Ryan looks up. His eyes are wide. “W-what?”

“He said that he’s gay,” Spencer returns. “He came out to you. What’d you do? Don’t leave me hanging.”

Ryan blinks a few times, as if he doesn’t quite get what Spencer wants from him, before shaking his head back and forth. He reaches up to rub at his eyes with a fist. “I—He… He says that he’s gay and I… I asked if he was sure. And he says that yeah, he’s sure. And I gotta ask him—cause I’ve gotta know, right?”

“Right.”

“I ask him,” Ryan recounts, “if that means he’s… been with a guy. If he’s ever kissed a guy before. And he says that, no. No, he hasn’t.”

The smile creeps back at the corners. It’s sad though. It’s a sad smile. Spencer can’t tell if he prefers it over the frown. 

“And I ask him then, how he knows he’s gay if he’s never kissed a guy. And he—” Ryan chokes. He covers his mouth with a palm. Shrugs his shoulders. “He says to me that he knows because every time he looks at me… he knows that he should be kissing me.”

Ryan turns to Spencer. As if he can’t believe what he’s saying. 

“Not that he wants to kiss me, mind you.” Ryan wet his lips. “He _should_ be kissing me.” 

Ryan chuckles. 

“And he did.”

He sits back on the bed, heavy. He just can’t believe it, can he? His own life. Spencer is watching him closely. Memorizing the way that Ryan shakes his head in utter disbelief. The way he opens his mouth, quirks his lips at the corner and then closes them. The way that he reaches up and touches his bottom lip with hesitant fingers. Like he remembers. 

“He kissed me.” The chuckle that accented that phrase was giddy. “Fifteen years old and I have my first kiss with a boy beneath the bleachers and I had the ugliest black eye then. Nasty one.”

Ryan closes his eyes. Inhales through his nostrils. 

“I’ll never know what he sees in me.”

Spencer doesn’t say it out loud but he thinks it. _I know. I know what that boy sees in you. It’s that smile of yours, how caring you are, how smart and how old for such a young man. The fact that when you tell your life story, it revolves around him. That’s what he sees in you. Dumbass._

Silence rests heavy overhead of them and Spencer thinks that’s the end. That’s the end of Ryan’s life story. That it ends with a stolen kiss beneath the bleachers when they’re fifteen that tastes like smoke and secrets. But then there’s a voice. Sound. 

“I’m not even his type.”

Spencer glances over at the sound of Ryan’s voice, his brows raising instantly in interest.  
He holds Ryan’s profile in his gaze longer than strictly necessary. Lets his eyes wander over the curve of the young/old man’s jaw and the way his long eyelashes bat over his cheeks when he closes his eyes against the shine of the hospital light. 

The messy, unwashed curls of copper hair that he has tucked behind his ears with shaking fingers. He needs a shower something awful. The man looks greasy. But there isn’t a shower in Brendon’s room so chances are, Ryan isn’t going to get one any time soon. But all that being said—even with the bruises beneath his eyes and the constant frown etched across his mouth—he’s not bad looking. 

He’s not a bad looking man, despite what he seems to think. Not beautiful, perhaps, like Brendon obviously is with those plump lips and black hair and dark eyes. But Ryan is pretty.

Spencer considers the definition of ‘pretty’ while he asks, “what’d you mean by that?” 

Ryan shakes his head once more. His eyes stay shut as he repeats, voice lowered an octave for annunciation, “I’m not his _type_.”

Spencer listens. Nods. “Okay. So what is his type?”

Ryan waits a moment to reply to that. He chews at his bottom lip thoughtfully, as if he has to get the answer right. Has to have it make sense to Spencer. He seems to have a complex with that. Saying things the correct way so they have meaning. 

Ryan tells the ceiling, and Spencer is meant to hear it, “Bren likes blue eyes.”

“Does he?” 

Ryan turns his face away from the ceiling and places his expression on Brendon, asleep in the bed, dead silent. Dead, dead silent. If it weren’t for the subtle beep of a monitor and the ragged rise and fall of his chest, Spencer would think he was already gone. 

How long does he have left? It’s hard to tell. Spencer wishes he had a calendar so he could count down the days. Figure how much time off work he needs to take. 

Ryan must have worried the same thing; when and where he is going to get his Brendon-Death-Calendar. He takes in a shaky breath. “Yeah, he does.”

Spencer sucks in the information with a slow, helpful nod. “Right. Okay. Brendon likes blue eyes then.”

Ryan laughs in return—a pained sound that has Spencer wincing—and wipes at the corners of his eyes with a knuckle before dragging the hand down his face when he finishes. He lets his palm rest over his mouth. As if holding back the words. 

Spencer waits patiently to hear more secrets.

It’s all secret, this conversation. Ryan’s dad smacking him around. Go-Fish on the porch. The bleacher kiss. These are for Brendon and Ryan’s ears only. Spencer just happens to be present. But they are not his secrets. They are not his stories. And he makes a promise to himself, watching Ryan wipe his eyes, that he’s never going to tell a soul. 

“That’s uh—” Ryan snorts, rubbing at his nose— “That was his big argument. When we broke up the first time… It was uh… He was eighteen, I was nineteen… and he was—he was drunk. Really, really fucking drunk. And for the entire night, he had just been hanging all over this guy at the bar we were at and I… I’m the jealous type. I was jealous, I’ll admit to that. Sometimes… A few times, he thought— _thinks_ its charming. That I care enough about him to get pissed when someone so much as cops a feel. Tells me he ‘likes my passion.’”

Ryan uses finger quotes. His voice sounds far away and Spencer gets the impression the story isn’t even being told to him. It is Ryan telling himself a story and using Spencer as a microphone. 

“So I yelled at him, right? Got all mad. And he just stood there, sputtering at me. Drunk as a fucking skunk, this kid, swaying on both feet. I remember…” Ryan closes his eyes, his lips tilting up at a memory. “The way that he was looking at me. Just these big, old, black eyes, all watery and red. His shirt it uh… it had two buttons undone, I remember, and he hadn’t shaved recently but he was too young to get a full beard; it was this red button up, the shirt. Neon, this thing. Horrific, but Brendon loved it. _Loves_ it. Being a beacon.” 

Ryan gestures with a hand to the whole of the air. Showing all the light that Brendon could project if he were only wearing that red shirt instead of purple lesions and a hospital gown. 

“And his sleeves were rolled up, halfway, and he had on these jeans… Good jeans. You’ve never seen jeans look so good on someone before, I swear it. And he had this new haircut, all fluffy and-and--God, the man was perfect. My type. My perfect, _perfect_ type. And we’re yelling at each other in the living room of my apartment—screaming, really just going at it. And I tell him that he shouldn’t even be dating me anyway, since he wants someone prettier…” The way Ryan says it is harsh, more melancholic as he continues, “And he says to me… He says—” A snort. Disbelieving once more— "‘Well it’s fine. It’s fine that you don’t want to fuck with me anymore because you don’t even have blue eyes anyway.’ Like that was some kind of a reason. That I don’t have blue eyes. Fuck me, right? Fuck me and my brown eyes.”

The laugh he lets out is choking. And then it drowns away. Subtle. Dissolves. 

He shakes his head. His expression is haunted. 

His eyes focus up on the ceiling. 

He blinks back the tears and Spencer pretends he doesn’t see them. 

“I don’t even have blue eyes…” Ryan squeezes them shut. A tear drips down his cheek and he hurries to wipe it off, shrugging his shoulders to shake himself back into reality. Matter of fact. “I’m not his type.” 

Spencer watches him. Waits for the follow up. Nothing comes. 

He takes it upon himself to prompt Ryan; he wants to hear this story. He’s desperate for this ending. Has to know. 

“The first time?” he asks. 

Ryan isn’t looking at him but his eyebrows arch. 

“You said it was the first time you broke up,” Spencer added. “How many times have you broken up?”

Ryan finally makes eye contact. He thinks about it and bobs his head around. “I don’t know… A lot. Bren, he’s… he’s dramatic.”

Ryan shifts around in his seat. Gives in with a huff.

“I’m dramatic.”

“What does that mean?” Spencer asks. 

“It means that when we fight, we _fight_. And Bren always makes a scene, storms out, goes and gets shitfaced somewhere. And he inevitably fucks someone.”

Spencer blinks in alarm at that admission. 

Ryan shrugs. “You’re his doctor, aren’t you? You should probably know this.”

Spencer agrees soundlessly. 

“He gets drunk. And he’s fucking gorgeous, don’t you think? I mean look at the kid.”

Brendon is lying flat on a hospital bed and his eyebrows are arched up like he’s in pain and he has one hand on his stomach and the other to his side where Ryan had abandoned it. His hair his flat and unbrushed. There is sweat on his brow. He looks sick. 

Ryan says, staring at him, “he’s gorgeous. And when he’s drunk, he’s flirty. He’s gorgeous and flirty, sitting on a barstool, and guys are horny. They’re are gonna approach him. They’re gonna put their hands on him and invite him home. I know that.” Ryan is shaking but it isn’t anger. It isn’t jealousy. Spencer can’t place it. But that haunted look is constant. “I know that…” 

Spencer wants to ask more. Thank God, Ryan carried on for him. 

“He always goes home with a guy when we fight. He gets fucked. He comes back the next morning, sporting a hangover and he _cries_.” Ryan sighs. “He always cries.”

Spencer tries to imagine it. The quirky guy he met a few weeks ago, all big smiles and stupid jokes… crying. It doesn’t fit to him. 

“It’s the hangover,” Ryan adds, like he can read Spencer’s thoughts. “Whenever he comes off his benders, he’s all emotional. Feels guilty as all hell for it. And he hangs all over me and begs—fucking _begs_ me—for forgiveness. That he didn’t mean it; it won’t happen ever again.”

Ryan turns his body to Spencer. 

“How sad is that?” he asks. “ _He_ begs _me_. Blames himself for it, always. Like he’s cheated on me or some shit—which he hasn’t. I don’t blame Bren for any of those nights. He gets drunk. Guys take advantage. And then… he just cries. He cries on me… Begs me…” 

Haunted. 

“It’s like he forgets that I’m the one who lets him leave.”

Spencer is letting his mind wander. Letting it chase around ideas and images of Brendon Urie drunk and grinning on a barstool with a scotch in his hand, all big black eyes and fat lips, in a neon red shirt with two buttons undone and the sleeves rolled up. Who wouldn’t take advantage? Looking like that, Brendon was asking for it. 

“I’ve never slept with anyone else,” Ryan blurts. 

Spencer can’t keep the surprise off his face. 

“Never.” Ryan rubs at the inside of his wrist with a thumb. “Only Brendon. It’s always only been him. I’ve never wanted to be with anyone else. Since seventh fucking grade, I knew he was the one. And if Brendon was always sober, I bet you he wouldn’t have either. He’s not a cheater. He’s a whore when he’s drunk but he’s not a cheater. He’s a good person. My baby’s a good person.”

He sounds like he’s desperate to convince Spencer. Spencer nods to appease him. 

“He got it… _this_ …” 

He means AIDS. Spencer knows what he means. He means AIDS but he can’t seem to form the words aloud. They are too much.

“From one of those guys. At the bars. The ones that… the ones that just…” 

Ryan is trembling. 

“Like he’s theirs. Like he’s their right. God. And I just fucking let him go. I just fucking let him go, don’t I?” 

Ryan puts a hand against his forehead, holding his hair back. 

“I _let_ him go. I always let him go. Knowing that he’s going to get drunk. Knowing that he’s gorgeous. That he’s flirty. That guys are horny. I let him out the door. _Knowing_.”

He digs both fists into his hair and he pulls so hard that his knuckles go white and Spencer thinks he’s going to rip the hair out of his scalp.

“It’s my fault,” Ryan whispers. He looks as though he is going to vomit. “It’s my fault. I let him go. If I hadn’t—I always let him go. I let them—I let it happen. It’s all my fault.”

And the worst part is, Spencer can’t argue. 

And he certainly can’t stop it when Ryan lurches from the bed and into the bathroom to empty his stomach in the sink. 

Spencer can’t object.

* * *

The following day he has lunch with Dallon in the courtyard as they are so accommodated at that point to doing. Dallon beneath the open sky, sitting up straight in a singular wire chair, sipping at his water while Spencer feverishly downs coffee. Such is life.

Brendon would say, ‘asi es la vida’ or ‘c’est la vi’ or whatever it is in Italian. 

Brendon would smile. 

But he hasn’t woken up yet so he doesn’t. Spencer left him in the hospital room with Ryan sitting on the bed beside him. He doesn’t know what to tell them. He doesn’t know how he can help other than sit there and listen to Ryan talk. Because he isn’t there for Brendon anymore, and he knows that. He’s there for Ryan. Ryan is the one who’s losing. 

Dallon hasn’t heard anything about Brendon since the last time Spencer mentioned it but he’ll know the name when he says it. Everyone who really knows Spencer knows the name Brendon. 

“Brendon’s back,” he says into the open courtyard air and Dallon directs his eyes to him. 

“Oh?” Dallon prompts. 

“He’s got it.” Is what Spencer says next which is all he needs to. Dallon knows he’s gay. He knows what ‘it’ means. He knows. 

“Damn.” Dallon is quiet. “How old is he again?”

“Twenty-three.”

“ _Dammit_.” Dallon shakes his head. He looks just as pained by the news as Spencer feels. “Just a kid.”

“Yeah. I just—” Spencer wipes a hand over his mouth. “I don’t know what his boyfriend is gonna do.”

It is the only time he’s used the word. But ‘partner’ sounds too removed and ‘lover’ isn’t right because they’re kids. They aren’t lovers. They’re poets and romantics and kids. They aren’t lovers. 

“I couldn’t imagine if…” Dallon is in awe. “I mean if Josh… I couldn’t. Five years of my life just… just gone? I mean what are you meant to do?”

What was twenty-three minus fifteen? Eight. 

Eight years Brendon and Ryan had been together. 

Longer than Spencer and Dallon had been with their significant others. 

“Been together since they were fifteen,” Spencer tells him because he as to tell him, he can’t keep that information to himself. It’ll kill him. 

Dallon’s blue eyes are massive. They match the sky above. No clouds but his pupils. He says again—it’s the only thing he can— " _Damn_.”

“Hasn’t known any other life,” Spencer mutters, “other than the one he shares. I mean… I mean what am I supposed to do? With that? With them?”

Dallon doesn’t know. 

No one knows. 

Spencer pays for lunch. It isn’t much. Just a coffee and a water. He’ll manage.

* * *

When Spencer returns to the room, Brendon is awake and Ryan is gone.

He approaches instantly, alarmed at the sight of the young man up in bed, and says, “Brendon.”

“Dr. Dick,” comes a rough response, the throat obviously less used than it used to be, and Brendon forces himself to sit. He flinches as he does but the smile is in place. “To what do I owe the pleasure, hm?”

Spencer smiles back uneasily. “You’re sick.”

“I know,” Brendon replies; he gestures to the purple marks that decorate him like periwinkle petals. “Look at me.”

“How do you feel?” Spencer walks closer hesitantly. 

Brendon laughs in a booming way as he cries, “I feel _sick_ , dipshit! Like my fucking skin is melting or some shit. I’m dying here, man, you can’t tell?”

The words hold painful meaning but Brendon laughs when he says them and he hasn’t stopped smiling his smile and Spencer just doesn’t understand him. He just doesn’t. He wishes that he did, truly. 

Spencer points at his face. “You’re smiling.”

“Of course I am,” Brendon says to him, “I can’t die if I’m frowning.”

Spencer’s returning smile relaxes. The kid is happy. The kid is dying and he’s happy. 

Spencer travels to be closer to Brendon’s bed and he stands at the end of it, bracing himself with a hand on the railing. 

There is a moment. 

“I’m not scared you know,” Brendon tells him and his voice is eerily quiet. He’s not the sort to be so quiet and Spencer has to step closer to hear him better. Brendon looks at him, smiling, all wide black eyes red at the corners and arched eyebrows. “I’m not.”

Spencer nods like he understands. “I know you’re not.”

Brendon rubs at the corner of one eye. “I’m not scared of death. I’m twenty-three so it kind of fucking sucks that I am. Dying, I mean. But… y’know. When you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go.” 

He chokes on a laugh like he can’t even manage to fully muster one up. Can’t even commit. 

“I’m not scared of death,” he repeats. He means it. “Just scared I’ll die ugly.”

Spencer chuckles. He knows that Brendon wants him to so that’s why he does. “You told Ryan that yet?”

“Of course I’ve told Ryan that,” Brendon returns, “it was the first thing I told him. He’s overreacting. I know he is. I’m just dying s’all. Don’t have to make a fuss over it.”

Spencer thinks of Ryan sitting on Brendon’s bed, monologuing. Crying. Vomiting. He doesn’t say a word. They aren’t his secrets. Spencer sends a glance over his shoulder. “Where is he?”

“Getting a drink,” Brendon returns. “I told him to leave me the hell alone. Bitch is depressing.”

Spencer laughs sadly. “It’s a depressing thing.”

“Well sure it is,” Brendon agrees, “but he can pretend it’s not for my sake.”

Spencer looks at him a while. “Is that what you’re doing?”

Brendon’s grin doubles. He flashes a wink. “Can’t prove that.”

But he just did.

* * *

Brendon gets sicker as the days go by. Ryan pretends not to notice. Or, he tries to pretend not to notice, but his eyes are worried and his breathing is sharper and he shakes when he talks to Spencer too long.

Five days pass, Brendon looks the sickest he’s ever been and he forgets to smile for a minute when Spencer first enters the room. That’s the cue. 

“You ran away,” Spencer says to Ryan in the hall so Brendon can’t hear. Sometimes he pretends to sleep so he can listen. But once he giggled and that blew his cover so Spencer and Ryan talk outside now.

“Yeah?” Ryan doesn’t understand. 

“He’s still got family, doesn’t he?” Spencer asks. “Someone who would… who would want to know that he’s—Now, uh… Ryan now’s the time to call them if they’re there.”

Ryan’s face drains. A week ago he would have said no. But he saw Brendon. He sees him every moment. He knows it’s the truth. And so he reluctantly takes Spencer’s phone—a number they can never trace back to him—and leaves a voicemail. 

“Hi Mrs. Urie,” he says into the phone after it beeps, holding it tight to his ear with both hands, “it’s Ryan Ross. Your boy stealer, huh?”

Spencer really shouldn’t be listening. But he doesn’t walk away. He stands in the hall in silence and listens to Ryan talk into the phone. He thinks that if he wasn’t there, Ryan wouldn’t be calling. So he stays. 

“This is a message regarding your baby boy. Your stupid son and his _stupid_ smile told me that I shouldn’t call you. It was a long time ago. Years. But I took his advice. Haven’t tried once. But uh… Drastic times, eh?”

Ryan massages his forehead and squeezes his eyes shut. 

“Your son isn’t the listening type—you know it too well; we both do—and I don’t listen to him. Your son doesn’t have enough logical ideas for me to listen to him. But uh… This is important, Mrs. Urie, this bares listening.”

He goes quiet a second. It is said more to Spencer than to the phone. 

“He’ll kill me if he knows I did this.”

Spencer urges him on with a bob of his head.

“To the point then,” Ryan continues, “your boy is sick…”

He breaks off into a laugh. 

“Dying is such a harsh word don’t you think? Who came up with _dying_? God, I suppose—” and Spencer flinches— "I wish I could share a word with him but… I mean I’ve yelled at him every day here. He’s not listening, Mrs. Urie. You can pray. He’s not listening. He’s too fucking bored to listen. He’s heard this song before. Knows the words by heart.”

Ryan is pinching the bridge of his nose and his eyes refuse to open. 

“Y’know… Your son asked me what I was doing the other night. _Praying_ , I said back and your stupid son had the nerve to laugh at me. Like this is all just some big joke and we’re waiting on the punchline.”

He chokes on his breath. 

“I’m not ready for it. I’m not ready for the punchline.”

He lets out what can only be described as a whimper before he starts again. Spencer merely stands and listens. He isn’t Jon Walker but his eyes listen. They couldn’t stop if they tried.

“You remember when you first met me, Mrs. Urie? Dirty little boy in your house that I was? You laughed at me too because I was too skinny you said. I’m still skinny if you care to know. I’ll be skinny for the foreseeable future. You can keep fucking laughing.”

Ryan takes a hissing inhale. 

“I love your son. I know it’s hard for you to—I don’t give a shit what you say. I love your son. Your son loves me. And he didn’t want me to tell you. He didn’t but I think you deserve to know. You raised your boy and he… he’s a good fucking man, Mrs. Urie. I love the boy you raised.”

Ryan directs his now open eyes to the ceiling. Darts his pupils over the tiles.

“He’s sick. To the point that… He’s gonna die, Mrs. Urie. He’s gonna die. Your boy’s dying and they can’t do shit. I’ve prayed. I swear I’ve prayed. Nothing.”

He laughs. 

“When I prayed, and when he laughed at me, your son told me he’s not scared of death; only that the disease will make him ugly. That’s what he’s telling everyone. And how stupid he is, hm? How could anything possibly make him ugly?” 

There are tears in the corner of Ryan’s eyes. He sniffs and wipes his cheeks to keep them back. 

“That uh… That should do. If you can come, I—your baby’s dying. Your baby’s dying so if you can come—if you want to kiss him goodnight a last time—” his breath hitches— "you should.”

He straightens up some. 

“Yeah uh… Yeah, that should do it. Alright. Bye then, Mrs. Urie.” He trips a little on the words. “Hope to see you soon.”

And something in the wetness of his eyes leads Spencer to believe he means it. 

It doesn’t matter though. 

No one comes.

* * *

Jon says to him in the locker room the next day, “where’ve you been, man? I swear I haven’t seen you around.”

“With a patient,” Spencer replies. 

“Huh?”

“Brendon Urie is back,” Spencer tells him and then stops, “oh, right, sorry. You wouldn’t know the name.”

He exits stage right.

* * *

It’s one of the rare times Brendon is awake. Ryan is, of course, on the bed with him, head in the crook of his neck. They kiss every once in a while, and Spencer doesn’t mind it. He’s seen Josh and Dallon do it too many times to count. He doesn’t care. It’s love.

“Y’know the cowboys were gay,” Brendon declares against Ryan’s ear. It probably broke his eardrum. Ryan doesn’t move though. Apparently, he’s fine with going deaf. 

“The cowboys?” Spencer asks him. 

“Were gay,” Brendon finishes with a nod. “Yep.”

“Interesting,” Spencer returns even though it isn’t. 

Brendon hums a tune to himself. Spencer bets he’s a good singer. Ryan is laying on him with an arm wrapped securely around his middle, practically melting into him. 

“I hate this bed,” he grunts to Brendon’s gown. 

Brendon looks down and smiles. He strokes at Ryan’s copper hair with a hand, an I.V. snugly placed in it. “Then go home, you asshole.”

“Can’t,” Ryan informs.

“Why not?”

Ryan grumbles, “isn’t home if you’re not there.”

“Don’t say that in public,” Brendon warns but his grin is big and his cheeks redden for a second, “it’s disgusting.”

Ryan is silent, face pressed to Brendon. He holds on like any moment Brendon might vanish. Who knows. He might. 

“C’mon,” Brendon tries, his eyes are glistening, and he blinks a few times to clear them, “go home. Get some sleep in an actual bed. Please. I’m begging you, man. Go be comfy, honey.”

Ryan sits up. His protest is obvious on his face. Spencer watches the exchange carefully. Watches the way Ryan’s eyes flash over Brendon’s and Brendon smiles such a genuine, happy, reassuring smile. It means everything, that smile. It means the world.

“I love you,” he whispers and kisses Ryan. Ryan kisses him back without hesitation and repeats the phrase into his mouth.

Spencer looks away. It isn’t something he is meant to witness. Isn’t for him.

“I’ll be right here when you get back,” Brendon promises and the tone reveals more than it’s supposed to, “just one night, baby, just one. I’m right here. I’ll be right here with you. Baby, I’m here.”

But it never is just one night. 

And Spencer knows the tactic. He knows it well. Dogs do the same. 

When a dog knows he is weak and unable to protect himself, when he knows he is vulnerable, he wants to be alone. 

Dogs want to be alone when they die.

* * *

Spencer proposes to Linda that night. She says yes. He’s got one life after all. He plans to live it.

Ryan is at home asleep, comfortable in bed. 

Brendon dies in the same hour.

* * *

Spencer goes to the hospital the next day, the emerald ring gone from his locker and the weight it brought along with it. But as he walks through the halls he knows. He fucking knows.

Feels it seeping from the floors to his feet.

He called Dallon the night prior. Found out that Dallon lost two close friends last week. He and Josh hold each other tighter now when they hug. Linda agreed to invite them for dinner. 

He walks the hall, daydreams about nothing and everything. He knows before he walks into an empty hospital room. He knows. 

Jon catches him leaving it. His brown eyes are truly listening when they fall on Spencer. Everything about his tired posture and his desperate expression says it. He’s honest. Aloud he says, taking Spencer by the shoulder to hold him, grip firm, “Smi— _Spencer_ … I uh… I know that this kid meant a lot to you. I do. And I’m sorry. I’m really fucking sorry man.”

Spencer thanks him. Isn’t his loss though. It isn’t.

* * *

He finds Ryan where he expects to.

The room masquerading as a church in the hospital with a high ceiling and a statue of Jesus bleeding on the cross, ripped apart. As raw and open as the people that sit in the pews. 

Ryan is the only one there, front row, hunched over, head buried in his hands. He is crying. His copper hair hangs over his face and the stained glass of the church windows cast down a multi-colored glow that makes his hair golden like a halo. 

Spencer comes to sit down beside him.

Ryan cries and he cries. 

But he’s young, Spencer thinks, and he’ll be okay. He’ll be okay. He isn’t a lover. He’s a romantic, he’s a poet. He’ll be happy again. Someday.

“Brendon’s happy,” Spencer tells him in a voice barely above breathing and Ryan hiccups to listen, “know that. He was happy. ‘Till the fucking end, that kid smiled. And that smile was for you. He loved you. He was and is happy. Know that. Please. Please know he was happy and it was you that made him that way.” 

Ryan keeps crying, tears running down his young face, but he nods his head like he understands. 

Spencer thinks to himself that he and Ryan will be happy. Someday they really will. Feels like for the first time he legitimately knows that. 

He wraps an arm around Ryan’s shoulders how a father would hold a child and the kid falls into him, burying his head into Spencer’s shoulder and clings to his scrubs. 

He sobs. 

Spencer prays. 

And—for a brief second—in _his_ hospital, God is allowed to lay a hand on the shoulder Ryan is leaning on for support, touching Ryan’s halo-golden hair, and Spencer knows it’ll make sense. 

Someday it’ll make sense.

**Author's Note:**

> Dude, formatting was such a bitch. Anyway. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> I wrote this in like a fever over the course of three days lol so.


End file.
